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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, t 



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Wesley and Swedenborg. 



FRATERNAL APPEAL 



TO 



METHODIST MINISTERS, INVITING THEM TO CONSIDER THE 
RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 



By E. R. KEYES, 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST NEW-CHURCH SOCIETY IN PHILADELPHIA. 



Noi 



PHILADELPHIA 
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO 

1872. 




HE LlBkARY 
[WASHINGTON 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by 

J. B. LTPPINCOTT & CO., 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 



Lippincott's Press, 
philadelphia. 



TO THE READER. 



In soliciting the attention of the Methodist ministry to 
the relations of Methodism to the New Church, I but fulfill 
what seems to me a duty which I owe to my former com- 
panions in Christian labor. During the three years which 
have elapsed since I severed my ecclesiastical connexion 
with Methodism, I have experienced so sensibly the advan- 
tages which may be derived from the study of that remark- 
able system of Christian doctrine and spiritual philosophy, 
first given to the world in the writings of Emanuel Sweden- 
borg, that I can do no less than commend this system to all 
whose candid attention I can secure. I cherish, too, a pecu- 
liar regard for the ministry and members of the Methodist 
Church. It was in no spirit of unkindness that I withdrew 
from their fellowship, but rather with deep regret that, with 
my new views of Christian doctrine, I could not consistently 
remain with them. I still hold them, therefore, in grateful 
remembrance; and shall ever deem myself a debtor to 
Methodism for unspeakable spiritual benefits, as well as for 
many genial and generous friends. I know of no more 



4 TO THE READER. 

suitable way of recognizing these obligations, than to direct 
my former associates, if I can, to that precious heritage of 
spiritual truth which is found in the writings of the New 
Church. 

The present, moreover, seems a fitting time for such an 
effort. Methodism is entering upon a new era. Hitherto 
the great problems of theology have caused comparatively 
little agitation and division within her borders. But the 
spirit of free inquiry is rapidly pervading the ranks both of 
her ministry and laity; and her beliefs are undergoing a 
searching re-examination. Whatever else may result, Meth- 
odism " cannot become an apostle of the dead past." If, as 
Neander says, " we stand on the line between the old world 
and a new, about to be called into being by the ever fresh 
energy of the Gospel," Methodism will be false to her tra- 
ditions as a progressive power, and lose her grandest oppor- 
tunity, if she does not identify herself with the " new world " 
of religious thought which is emerging into existence. 

E. R. K. 

1333 Gerard Avenue, 

Philadelphia, April 20, 1872. 



Wesley and Swedenborg. 



ABOUT the middle of the last century the condition of 
the Christian world had become such as to excite 
alarm in the minds of all intelligent and serious observers. 
For a hundred years previous, the school of English Deists 
had been waging effectual warfare against the organized 
Christianity of the day. Lord Herbert of Cherbury had 
written upon the universal religion, or the religion of nature, 
and argued its sufficiency without the Christian revelation. 
Thomas Hobbes had sought to resolve religion into a mere 
conventional institution, a vested interest of the state. The 
Earl of Shaftesbury, though more moderate in his tone, and 
respectful toward religion, yet declared his dissent from the 
dogmatic Christianity of the times, and was ranked by 
churchmen as an enemy of the true faith. Collins asserted 
in an able treatise the right of free thinking. Woolston alle- 
gorized the miracles of the New Testament, and aimed to 
undermine the foundations of Christianity. Tindall, Chubb, 
Hume and Lord Bolingbroke carried on the relentless 
assault against the shattered and trembling fabric of the 
traditional theology, and congratulated themselves that the 
victory was almost won. On the continent, Voltaire and the 
French infidels generally waxed bold and insolent toward 
an effete and impotent church ; and in Germany Semler and 
Bardht were laying the foundations of the modern system of 
Rationalism. 

l* 5 



6 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

In the midst of this hostile activity, the Church, though 
not wholly idle, was well-nigh powerless. A few trained 
and earnest minds maintained her cause, but made no deci- 
sive impression on the public mind. Even their own testi- 
mony is conclusive on this point. Watts declared that there 
was " a general decay of vital religion in the hearts and lives 
of men." Archbishop Seeker says : " Christianity is ridi- 
culed and railed at with very little reserve, and the teachers 
of it without any at all." Bishop Burnett laments, " with 
deepest concern," the "imminent ruin hanging over the 
Church ;" and Bishop Warburton testifies that " the divine 
lyre is almost silenced." Thus the enemies and the friends 
of Christianity alike bear witness to the deplorable state into 
which it had fallen, and the prospect of its speedy extinction 
unless Providence should interpose in its behalf. 

At this crisis two remarkable men made their appearance 
in Europe; one in England, the other on the continent. 
Their names were John Wesley and Emanuel Swedenborg. 
Both were sons of eminent clergymen, and very respectably 
connected. Both were reared in the bosom of the State 
Church in their respective countries, and were thoroughly 
educated. Both were religiously disposed in early life. 
Both were accomplished and model gentlemen of the old 
regime. Both were men of great mental power and physical 
endurance, and enjoyed almost perfect health until extreme 
old age. Their labors, though diverse, were intimately 
related and complementary. Swedenborg was born in 1688, 
and died in 1772. Wesley was born in 1703, and died in 
1791. They were, therefore, contemporaries in active labor 
for about half a century. Both alike appeared for the res- 
cue and maintenance of the Christian religion. Both were 
ready and voluminous writers, and were well versed in the 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 7 

literature of ancient as well as modern times. But there 
were also marked differences between them. In genius and 
temper they were quite unlike. Wesley was severe and 
ascetic in his spirit ; Swedenborg was free and generous. 
Wesley was narrow and intense in his views and feelings ; 
Swedenborg was broad and discursive in his mental activity. 
Wesley was a man of one work, and that work he did 
thoroughly and well; Swedenborg was a man of varied 
studies and occupations, and a master in them all. Wesley 
devoted his whole life to the work of converting and caring 
for the souls of men ; Swedenborg gave the first half of his 
active life to public duties in the service of the government 
of Sweden, and to scientific, philosophical, and literary 
studies, and the latter half to biblical and spiritual investi- 
gations. In Wesley's mind " there was nothing of the philo- 
sophic quality," but instead of it a thorough earnestness of pur- 
pose and an intuitive perception of right practical measures, 
which fitted him to " lead and command " men ; Swedenborg 
was philosophical, ruminative, and deeply spiritual, but not 
adapted to the mastery of men, nor capable of entering into 
the excitement and rivalry of political life. Wesley was 
highly susceptible to spiritual influences, but lacked the 
power to comprehend rightly the strange phenomena, the 
wonderful psychical manifestations, that came under his 
notice; Swedenborg was still more open to spiritual influ- 
ences, and had the self-poise and deep philosophical and 
spiritual insight that enabled him to understand spiritual 
phenomena and ascertain their laws. Wesley's sphere of 
labor was chiefly among the ignorant and poor, over whom 
he exercised a beneficent and almost absolute control ; while 
Swedenborg's associations were among the influential classes. 
Wesley was an evangelist of the Church of England ; and 



8 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Swedenborg professed to be the Lord's servant for the work 
of revealing the spiritual sense of the Word, and the grand 
realities of the spiritual world. Wesley preached and 
wrote for his own times ; hence his writings are rapidly 
passing out of public notice, and ceasing to be relished even 
by those who bear his name : Swedenborg was very imper- 
fectly known and appreciated by his contemporaries, and 
wrote, not for them, but for the Church in all future ages ; 
hence his writings are but slowly coming to the notice of the 
public, and are read only by the prepared and thoughtful 
few. They will yet command the attention they deserve. 

But these remarkable men, though contemporaries and 
spending much of their time in London, never met in this 
world. Wesley was partially acquainted with Swedenborg's 
peculiar views, and wrote a lengthy review of his system. 
He utterly failed, however, to grasp the system in its com- 
pleteness and symmetry, and hence misconceived and per- 
verted its several parts. What the result might have been had 
these two men met and become acquainted with each other, 
it is impossible to know, and useless to surmise. We have 
proof, however, that they mutually desired a meeting. To- 
ward the end of February, 1772, both being then in London, 
Swedenborg addressed a note to Wesley, stating that he had 
been informed in the spiritual world that he (Wesley) had 
" a strong desire to converse with him ;" and added that he 
should be happy to see him, if he would favor him with a 
visit. Wesley frankly admitted to those who were with him 
at the time, that he had been strongly impressed with a 
desire to see and converse with Swedenborg, but had not 
mentioned the desire to any one. He wrote in reply that he 
was about to start on a six months' journey, but would wait 
upon Swedenborg on his return. The latter answered, that 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 9 

the proposed visit would be too late, as he should depart to 
the spiritual world on the 29th day of the next month, never 
to return. He died on the day designated ; and the inter- 
view never took place on earth. It was wisely ordered, 
doubtless, that they should not meet. Each had his appro- 
priate work to do ; and it was well that each was left to ful- 
fill his providential mission, uninfluenced by the other. 
Wesley's work, like Swedenborg's, was of momentous im- 
portance ; and the exigencies of the Church and the world 
required that it should be performed as preliminary to that 
deeper and wider movement which Swedenborg came to 
announce. 

The mission of Wesley was to revive the dying embers of 
spiritual life in the Christian world. His genius and studies 
did not fit him for reconstructing its theology. He did not 
attempt this. He accepted the theology of the Anglican 
Church in its essential features ; and putting it into its sim- 
plest form, sought to impregnate it with divine life, and 
bring it to bear on a corrupt and skeptical age. He 
preached with authority and power as a messenger sent of 
God. He aimed to awaken men to repentance and newness 
of life. It was not in his thought to propound a new scheme 
of divinity, or to build up a new ecclesiastical organization. 
His societies were simple associations within the fold of the 
Established Church, designed to supplement its work. The 
control of these societies naturally fell into Mr. Wesley's 
hands ; and he accepted this responsibility as a trust com- 
mitted to him by the Lord. He did not seek power for its 
own sake, or for any selfish ends. 

Dismissing Mr. Wesley, let us now take a survey of the 
great religious movement which, in connection with Whit- 
field, he was instrumental in inaugurating. 



10 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

1. One of its most distinctive elements was the spiritual 
power which it infused into the old, familiar doctrines of 
religion. No new dogma was proclaimed ; but the accepted 
Protestant faith, unchanged in verbal statement, seemed all 
at once to become big with a new and glorious meaning. 
Doctrines long dead and powerless, falling now from the lips 
of earnest men, smote upon the hearts of the hearers with 
resistless force, as if launched by the hand of the Almighty. 
The preacher might be learned, or he might be illiterate ; it 
mattered not which ; it was not so much the man, as his 
message, that was regarded ; not so much the audible voice, 
as the internal, silent power of the divine Spirit that clinched 
conviction upon the soul. Men were brought face to face 
with God, and all mere moral and prudential motives were 
swallowed up in the all-absorbing thought that God's eye 
was upon them, and that they must commend themselves to 
Him. They had always heard and believed that God was 
love; that He was angry with the wicked; that Christ 
suffered and died to reconcile his Father to us ; that sinners 
might be forgiven through faith in his blood; that being 
justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord 
Jesus Christ ; and that the wrath of God will abide forever 
on all who refuse to obey the Gospel. And yet none seemed 
to have any conception of the proper force of these decla- 
rations. These were common-place doctrines which passed 
with the mass of nominal Christians unquestioned, and at the 
same time unheeded. It was given to the preachers of 
Methodism to discern in these statements something more 
than theological dogmas. For them they contained living 
truths, matters of inward personal experience, and were the 
very voice of God. Hence it seemed as if a new Gospel had 
suddenly burst upon the world. Christ was preached with 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 11 

awful authority aud power, as a present, loving and almighty 
Saviour. He was held up to the gaze of sinners as a being 
full of the tenderest human sympathies, and yet as compre- 
hending in himself all the fullness of the eternal Divinity. 
The results that often attended this kind of preaching were 
indescribable. They must be experienced in order to be 
understood. The essential glories of the day of Pentecost 
were frequently repeated, perhaps surpassed. 

Among the peculiar experiences which gave to Methodism 
this wonderful spiritual power, we may instance the sense of 
sin, the assurance of pardon, peace of mind, a spirit of entire 
consecration, and the consciousness of union with God in 
Christ. These experiences often assumed great distinctness 
and vividness. Sin was felt to be an infringement of the 
personal majesty of Jehovah, and deserving of his sternest 
visitations. The sense of guilt was overpowering. Souls 
writhed under it in agony, as if already tossing on the lake 
of fire. They felt themselves to be in the hands of an angry 
God, and that resistance to his will was utterly hopeless. 
They caught with passionate eagerness, therefore, at the idea 
of salvation through an almighty and loving Saviour, who had 
satisfied the justice of God by his own sufferings and death. 
Him they could trust ; and trusting in him, they felt that they 
were safe. Yielding themselves up to him in a solemn cove- 
nant of repentance and obedience, they felt that the love of 
God was shed abroad in their hearts, and that the dark 
burden of their guilt was all taken away. The moment 
of this experience was one of unutterable joy, as when one is 
released from sentence of death. Humble, loving gratitude 
possessed the soul ; and peace, calm, deep, and measureless, 
succeeded to agonizing fear and repentance. The duty of 
an entire consecration of their service to the Lord, was then 



12 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOKG. 

cordially recognized, and undertaken in reliance upon divine 
help. They felt, too, that a new and infinite source of 
strength was opened up within them. They were in con- 
scious union with God. Divine power seemed to pervade 
their souls. They were "strengthened with might by the 
Holy Spirit in the inward man." 

The preachers of Methodism, possessed of these elements 
of spiritual power, gave to the words of Jesus and the dog- 
mas of theology a significance and efficacy unprecedented 
since the days of the apostles. All classes of society, but 
mainly the middle and lower classes at first, hung upon their 
lips with wrapt attention, and were swayed by them as a 
forest before the wind. Serious theological errors were often 
inculcated; but the practical effect of these was generally 
neutralized by the sincere and earnest spirit of both preachers 
and people, and the many vital truths which they received 
and obeyed. Especially were they mighty in the Scriptures, 
often wielding particular texts and historical facts with great 
skill and resistless power. 

2. Another distinctive element in Methodism was the im- 
portance it attached to a good life. Its doctrine of salvation 
by faith only, might in logical strictness have been made an 
apology for neglecting the divine precepts ; but practically 
the doctrine was not and could not be so interpreted by any 
sincere Methodist. Obedience to the truth of God as taught 
in the Holy Scriptures was insisted upon quite as strongly 
as faith itself; and faith was declared to be dead and worth- 
less unless expressed and evidenced in good works. Men 
were exhorted to repent and do works meet for repentance. 
They were also exhorted to believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ, and were charged, on peril of nullifying their faith 
and incurring eternal damnation, to keep his command- 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 13 

ments. Hence they were accused by their Calvinistic oppo- 
nents of teaching salvation by the merit of works. This 
accusation was met by the retort, that Calvinism teaches 
salvation by faith only, and thus abrogates the divine law 
as a rule of conduct. In truth, neither party was actually 
guilty of the charge made by its adversary. Both alike 
were careful to obey the divine precepts; and both alike 
rejected the idea of merit in such obedience. Both acknow- 
ledged that, in men, all good and all power to do good is 
of and from God ; and that merit is impossible to any crea- 
ture. The preachers of Methodism were especially earnest 
in enforcing repentance, restitution, and external as well as 
internal holiness of life. This was often carried to the verge 
of asceticism ; but sinners were never left in doubt as to the 
absolute importance of renouncing every evil way — in desire 
and thought as well as in outward act — if they would be 
saved. This inexorable requirement was a Avord of power. 
Its perfect justice was obvious to all. It carried with it also 
the implication of a promise that both the love and justice 
of God would guarantee the well-being of all who submitted 
to its claims. 

Closely allied to this element of Methodism, if not sub- 
stantially identical with it, was its conception of religion as 
consisting not in outward rites and ecclesiastical arrange- 
ments, but in love to God and man. Wesley says : " Meth- 
odism, so called, is the old religion, the religion of the Bible, 
the religion of the primitive Church, the religion of the 
Church of England. This old religion is no other than 
love, the love of God and of all mankind. . . . Those who 
hold it are not bigoted to opinions ; they would hold right 
opinions ; but they are peculiarly cautious not to rest the 
weight of Christianity there." This noble, Christian utter- 
2 



14 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORGL 

ance finds a fitting response in the words of Swedenborg : 
" If the members of the Church had made love to the Lord 
and charity toward their neighbor the principal point of 
faith, doctrinals would then be merely varieties of opinion 
concerning the mysteries of faith, which they who are true 
Christians would leave to every one to receive according to 
his conscience ; while the language of their hearts would be, 
He is a true Christian who lives as a Christian-, that is, as 
the Lord teaches." {Arcana Codestia, 1799.) It is due to 
Methodism to say, that sentiments such as these have gen- 
erally met with a cordial response both from her ministers 
and people. Bishop Janes says : " It is one of the advan- 
tages and beauties of the Methodist Episcopal Church, that 
there is nothing in her religious faith or education or 
polity that embarrasses our fellowship with all who love our 
Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. We can commune with 
them, work with them, and rejoice with them, just as far as 
their catholicity will admit." {Methodist Quarterly Review, 
July, 1869.) 

I will not now press the inquiry, " How far has Method- 
ism remained true to these lofty principles?" or, "Is she 
now ready to fellowship ' all who love our Lord Jesus Christ 
in sincerity ?' " I wish only to call attention to the fact 
that, according to the testimony of some of her highest 
authorities, as well as according to the teachings of one 
whom they have been accustomed to regard as far removed 
from the true faith, religion, the religion of Christ, the 
religion that saves men, consists in love to God, evidenced 
by love to man and a life of genuine, practical piety. 
Where these elements exist, one is acknowledged to be in a 
state of salvation, be his speculative .opinions on theological 
subjects what they may. 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 15 

3. The third distinctive element in Methodism was its spirit 
of Christian philanthropy. It was a message of "good will 
to men." Sinners of every grade, every condition in life, 
every nationality, were the subjects of its earnest concern. 
The true Methodist, whether minister or layman, believed 
in the priceless value of every human soul ; and felt that no 
effort was too costly which might be required to save a soul 
from the horrors of the " second death." But there was a 
further and perhaps stronger motive which prompted him 
to labor for the salvation of his fellow-men. He looked 
upon them as the purchase of the Redeemer's blood. They 
were regarded as infinitely dear to Him who endured un- 
utterable agonies, and yielded up his life to rescue them 
from hell. In proportion, therefore, as one was inspired 
with love to Christ, would he desire and seek the salva- 
tion of those for whom Christ had died. Every sinner 
converted was a trophy to be laid at the feet of Jesus, a 
star to be set in his diadem ; and no service was believed 
to be so acceptable to him as this. Love to Christ and love 
to men, became thus to every earnest Methodist an imper- 
ative warrant for efforts to save souls from death. He 
was on fire with consuming zeal; he was ready to en- 
counter perils of the way, perils from the elements, 
perils from pestilence, perils from hunger and thirst, 
perils from raging mobs, and perils from hostile civil and 
ecclesiastical powers, in the fulfillment of his high com- 
mission. Indeed, he delighted to plant the standard of the 
Gospel in advanced and exposed positions. He was most 
at home on the skirmish line, or on the red front of battle, 
face to face with the full strength of the enemy. Method- 
ism was thus made emphatically a missionary movement. 
Like her Lord, she " came, not to call the righteous, but 



16 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

sinners to repentance." She was ever pushing into the 
regions beyond, where christianizing agencies had never 
before penetrated ; and her itinerants were generally the first 
ministers of the Gospel that made their appearance in the 
frontier settlements on this continent. But nominal Chris- 
tendom was too limited a field for her enterprise. Her 
eager gaze was early fixed on the heathen world. She 
coveted these vast possessions for her divine Master ; and so 
soon as her resources of men and money would warrant the 
undertaking, her missionaries were sent abroad into foreign 
fields to tell the story of the Incarnation and the Cross. 
Indeed, all existing religious bodies in Europe and in this 
country caught inspiration from her enthusiasm, and en- 
gaged heartily in practical Christian effort. Bible, Tract, 
Sunday-school and Missionary societies sprang into exist- 
ence, as if the creative effluence from God were going forth 
among men. It was an era of great moral and social 
changes of the most beneficent character ; and the student 
of history who desires to arrive at a true understanding of 
the remarkable events which characterized the last half of 
the 18th century must make himself familiar with the rise 
and progress of Methodism. 

I am aware that the statement here given of the elements 
of spiritual power in Methodism, is meagre and imperfect ; 
but it is all that my present limits will allow. Enough has 
been said, however, to show that the Methodist movement 
was one of no ordinary character. It evidently marks a new 
era in the religious history of the world. It was not a mere 
continuation of the Reformation : it was a new Reformation, 
sustaining, doubtless, an intimate relation to that inaugurated 
by Luther, but differing from it most essentially. Without 
Luther's work, Wesley's would have been impossible ; and 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 17 

without Wesley's work, Luther's was incomplete, and must 
have come to naught. Luther broke the spiritual despotism 
of Home, and exemplified the right of free thought and 
private judgment. He restored the Bible to the people, and 
taught men how to find access to God without the offices of 
the church or priest. His work was mainly theological and 
ecclesiastical. The conflict in which he engaged, and in 
which he was so successful, was a war of opinions and prin- 
ciples relating to the externals of the church. Wesley, on 
the other hand, concerned himself very little with questions 
of this nature. Holding them to be of secondary import- 
ance, he sought to restore the vital spirit of Christianity. 
It was not enough for him that the church was sound in 
doctrine, apostolic in its order, and comely in outward form, 
while she was yet powerless, cold and dead. He desired to 
see her filled with the life and warmth of divine love, active 
with holy energy, and beaming with celestial grace. This 
was the Reformation which he labored to accomplish, and 
lived to see advancing with great power. 

But the relations of Methodism are not wholly with the 
Reformation, or any past order of events. In the words of 
Isaac Taylor : 

" Every event, or course of events, that may deserve to be 
spoken of as an epoch in religious history, must stand related 
to the future as well as to the past. Methodism, the coherent 
dependence of which upon the Reformation may be traced, 
will, no doubt, be. seen also to reappear among those greater 
religious movements which are destined next to agitate the 
social system. An attempt to predict distinctly those future 
movements ought to be reprehended as presumptuous. 
Nevertheless, it may be warrantable to pursue an analogy 
thus far; that is to say, while considering the relations of 

2* 



18 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Methodism to the Reformation, to consider also, what it is 
to which Methodism may have been the proper preliminary, 
or to what order of events, yet future, it may seem to point." 
— Wesley and Methodism, p. 22. 

Methodism is not a finality. It is a great power for good ; 
but none will claim for it perfection, either as a life, a doc- 
trine or an organization. Its achievements in multiplying 
converts, instituting evangelizing and educational agencies, 
building church edifices, and providing all the externals of 
religion, have been marvelous beyond all precedent in 
ancient or modern times; but it has ever been ready to 
acknowledge its defects, and to change its instrumentalities 
when new exigencies have arisen. Its spirit is essentially 
progressive; and we detract nothing from its true glory 
when we speak of it as a preparative and prophecy of better 
things to come. The Methodism of the present must pass 
away ; but its dissolution will be the birth-struggle of a new 
and higher Methodism. From within the vanishing forms 
of the old economy there will burst forth a fuller manifesta- 
tion of divine light and life. Christianity has never yet dis- 
played its full power. Its divine beauty has been marred 
by the errors and imperfections of men. It has gained in 
Methodism its highest known development as a spiritual 
power; but all admit that it has not yet reached the mil- 
lennial day which the Word of God foretells. Shall it be 
deemed improbable, however, that Methodism is the imme- 
diate precursor of that day? May it not be the first phase 
of that final and crowning dispensation of divine truth, on 
which the hope of the Church has been so long and so 
earnestly fixed ? 

In suggesting now the intimate relationship of Methodism 
to the New Church foretold in the Apocalypse, I am aware 



WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 19 

that I bring into association names and systems which have 
generally been regarded as sustaining to each other no pos- 
sible relation except that of utter antagonism. I encounter 
at once the honest prejudices of good men, who look upon 
the professed adherents of the New Church as enemies of 
evangelical religion. I know how difficult is my task in 
attempting even to get the ear of those to whom these words 
are addressed. I am impressed with the conviction, never- 
theless, that some tentative efforts ought to be made toward 
securing a better understanding between the adherents of 
the New Church and the supporters of the prevalent organ- 
ized Christianity. It is evident that the efforts of good men 
on both sides are, at present, mutually hindered by mutual 
misapprehension. Some zealous New Churchmen have ex- 
cited against themselves and their cause a determined hos- 
tility, by identifying the New Church with a certain new 
ecclesiastical organization, thus denying to all other religious 
bodies any claim to a living and valid Christianity ; while 
the defenders of the so-called evangelical faith have, in turn, 
refused to New Churchmen both ecclesiastical and Christian 
fellowship. But there can be no excuse for the further per- 
petuation of these mutual mistakes and recriminations. 
Bigotry and unoharitableness stand rebuked by the genius 
of Christianity and the spirit of the new Age; and it will 
not be for lack of opportunities to know each other better, if 
the parties to the issue in question continue in a state of 
antagonism. 

I come now to the consideration of that religious Move- 
ment to which Methodism may be regarded as " the proper 
preliminary." 

I have already intimated that this Movement, greater and 



20 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

wider than Methodism itself, is the establishment of a New 
Church among men. Methodism may be viewed, moreover, 
either as preliminary to this movement, or as the first phase 
of the movement itself. Viewed historically, or in its 
ecclesiastical developements, it should be held as preliminary 
to what is known as the external New Church ; while, viewed 
in its origin and most vital elements, it is but the first phase 
of New Church life in the world, and therefore an essential 
part of the New Church itself. 

WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 

In endeavoring to unfold what is meant by the New 
Church, it will be necessary to do it in such a way as to 
exhibit its proper relations to Methodism. I must give, 
therefore, something more than a mere definition of it. I 
must speak of its origin and the process of its formation, as 
well as of its outward historical developments. I shall 
assume, too, the truth of what Swedenborg has told us con- 
cerning the economy of the spiritual world, at the same time 
only asking of those who discredit his claims, that they will 
accept his statements as provisional hypotheses merely, 
whose value is to be tested, like the theories of science, by 
the manner in which they enable us to explain and har- 
monize the facts with which we have to deal. 

There have been several churches or dispensations dur- 
ing the history of our race, each of which has been dis- 
tinguished from the others by something peculiar in its 
genius and its degree of spiritual life. The men of the 
Adamic or Most Ancient Church were in a state of true 
order, and offered no resistance, therefore, to the divine in- 
flux of love and wisdom. They had a clear perception 
of the good and the true. Love to God was the ruling 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 21 

principle of their life ; and, like the instinct of the animal 
creation, led them with unerring certainty to the know- 
ledge of divine truth. They were in childlike innocence 
and simplicity, and were willing to be led by the Lord. But 
in process of time, they began to decline from this celestial 
state. They asserted their own self-hood, and fell to reason- 
ing about matters of opinion and faith. Instead of receiv- 
ing truth from the Lord by open revelation, they sought to 
discover and establish it by their own understanding. The 
result was a " flood" of evils and falsities, which swept away 
the Most Ancient Church. This was succeeded by the 
Noetic or Ancient Church, to which an external or written 
revelation was given, by means of which men might be 
taught what was true, and so be led to a life of charity. 
The men of this church, though principled in a lower degree 
of spiritual life than the men of the Most Ancient Church, 
were yet in the exercise of spiritual perception to such an 
extent that they were able to discern clearly the correspond- 
ence between things natural and things spiritual, and also to 
understand the Kevelation which was given them in sym- 
bolical or correspondential language. But the decline went 
on. The "fall" was not yet complete. The men of the 
Ancient Church, from being spiritual, became natural. 
They ceased at last to discern spiritual truth and to be led 
by it ; and became immersed in the lusts and errors of the 
natural mind. The Revelation which God had given, be- 
came unintelligible to them; and was superseded by the 
Hebrew Scriptures. 

Thus the Noetic, or spiritual church passed away, and 
the Jewish Church was established. This was a purely ex- 
ternal Church, or, more properly, the representative of a 
church, there being in it nothing of genuine spiritual life. 



22 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Its rites and ceremonials when properly observed, however, 
served as forms into which a measure of divine influence 
could flow, and preserve men in a kind of external morality 
and sanctity. But even these forms came at length to be 
neglected or desecrated. The Sacred Scriptures as well as 
the rites and ceremonies of religion, were practically violated 
and trampled under foot by the Jewish people. Humanity 
sounded the lowest depths of its degradation, and must have 
perished but for the advent of the Lord. By his incarna- 
tion, glorification and work of redemption, He checked the 
downward tendencies of the race, provided for its return to 
the heights from which it had fallen, and instituted a new 
church on earth as a means to this end. This church was 
based upon the acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus Christ 
as the Son of God, and upon a life of obedience to his com- 
mandments. But no scheme of doctrine, rationally un- 
folded, was propounded to the first adherents of the Chris- 
tian church. They were not prepared to receive it. To 
them Christianity was more a system of facts, than of 
doctrines ; more an outward form concealing mysteries, than 
a scheme of rational truth. But efforts were soon made 
to evolve a system of doctrine from the facts of Christianity. 
The result was what might have been expected. A pesti- 
lent brood of mutually hostile sects and creeds sprung into 
existence ; spiritual life was destroyed ; and about the middle 
of the last century, according to the testimony of the 
writers of that period, Christianity was on the verge of utter 
extinction. 

The New Church, described in the Apocalypse, and now 
descending out of heaven from God, was then inaugurated. 
This involved, as indeed did the institution of the Noetic and 
Christian Churches, a general judgment in the spiritual 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 23 

world. During the Christian dispensation, which came to a 
close about the middle of the 18th century, those who lived 
in well-defined states of good or evil, passed, at death, into 
the world of spirits, and thence, after suitable preparation, 
into heaven or hell — the good, into the Christian heaven, 
and the evil into the corresponding hell. But there were 
many who were in a mixed spiritual condition, some being 
inwardly evil, but outwardly religious ; and others inwardly 
good, but immersed in ignorance, or in false beliefs. These 
classes formed themselves into imaginary heavens in the 
world of spirits, and accumulated there in immense numbers, 
so that the influx of divine love and wisdom, in its descent 
through these heavens into the minds of men on earth, was 
perverted and changed into evils and falsities. Those who 
were inwardly good, but grossly ignorant or mistaken, 
remained in their imaginary heaven till they were properly 
purified from their ignorance and errors, and were then 
received among the angels. But those who, while on earth, 
had been inwardly evil, though outwardly moral and re- 
ligious, remained in this imaginary heaven from age to age, 
and became more and more confirmed in their evil states. 
They were organized into vast civil and ecclesiastical com- 
munities, similar to those in which they had lived while on 
earth, and by their perpetual influx into the minds of men, 
helped to perpetuate all the errors and evils which existed 
in nations and churches in this world. They were inspired 
from the hells with which they were in close alliance ; and 
were encroaching more and more on the ultimate, or lowest 
sphere of the Christian heaven. This state of things could 
not long continue. The order and peace of the heavens, as 
well as the safety of the Church, demanded that this vast 
and powerful combination .of spirits should be broken up. 



24 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

A judgment was therefore executed upon them, not forensic- 
ally, or after the forms of earthly tribunals, but by a clearer 
manifestation of divine truth among the angels, and, through 
them, among the imaginary heavens. The latter being 
unwilling and unable to receive the truth, or to bear the 
flood of light which was poured upon them, were speedily 
dissolved, just as associations of wicked men here are broken 
up by the truth which a free press flashes upon them from 
day to day. This illusory heaven thus " departed as a scroll 
when it is rolled together ; and every mountain and island 
were moved out of their places." Its inhabitants, stripped 
of all disguises, and revealed in their inherent vileness and 
deformity, sought refuge from the blaze of divine truth amid 
the darkness of hell. The Christian heaven being freed from 
their infestations, was elevated into a clearer perception of 
divine truth. It was constituted a " new heaven," and fitted 
to become the medium through which divine influences 
might flow down into the minds of men, and inaugurate a 
new state of religion in the world. 

This latest general judgment, resulting in the formation 
of a " new heaven and a new earth," or in the illumination 
of the Christian heaven by clearer displays of divine truth, 
and the institution of a New Church on earth, is also the 
last general judgment. Owing to the fullness and rapid 
diffusion of rational and spiritual light among men on earth 
and in the world of spirits as well as in the heavens, both 
men and spirits are more easily judged and classified than 
formerly ; so that now none remain in the intermediate world 
more than twenty or thirty years, and few so long as this, 
before they pass on to their final abode in heaven or hell. 
It is impossible, therefore, for the spirits of men to accumu- 
late in large numbers in that world, or to form powerful 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 25 

combinations for evil purposes. Hence it is that evil combi- 
nations and corrupt institutions in this world, having no firm 
spiritual basis to rest upon, no enduring alliance with kin- 
dred spiritual organizations in the world of spirits, have, 
during the last hundred years, been growing less and less 
stable, and been dissolved with far greater ease and rapidity 
than in previous centuries. 

According to the testimony of Swedenborg, who claims to 
have witnessed through open spiritual vision the processes 
of the last general judgment, this event occurred in 1757. 
But every such event is preceded by a work of visitation 
and exploration. It is no arbitrary, forced and violent 
procedure. It is brought about in accordance with the 
laws of man's spiritual being. We must presume, there- 
fore, that the preliminary processes of this event began 
some years previous to the grand consummation. While 
the imaginary heavens were yet exulting in their fancied 
strength, and threatening more and more boldly the peace 
of the angels, reactionary movements were initiated by the 
Lord among the latter, and preparations were made for the 
overthrow of their enemies. These activities in heaven, at 
first comparatively feeble, and ultimated in efforts isolated and 
but partially successful among men, gradually increased in 
energy and scope, till the angelic hosts were all astir as if 
for some mighty enterprise, and strange tremblings and 
premonitions began to run through the whole imaginary 
heaven*. In other words the simple faith of the apostolic 

* In support of the view here advanced concerning an " imagin- 
ary heaven," I beg leave to call the attention of the reader to the 
following : " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven." Luke x. 
18. "And there was war in heaven : Michael and his angels fought 
against the dragon ; and the dragon fought and his angels, and pre- 
3 



26 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

church, the faith in which the martyrs died, the faith on 
which the Christian heaven was founded, namely, the 
acknowledgment of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of 
God and the Saviour of men, and the necessity of obedience 
to his teachings in order to salvation, was proclaimed with 
great clearness and authority throughout the world of 
spirits. Those who were not in a state to receive these 
truths, fled to their infernal abodes ; while those who were 
prepared to welcome this Gospel, were received among the 
angels. 

The result of this dispersion of the imaginary heavens, 

vailed not ; neither was their place found any more in heaven." 
Rev. xii. 7, 8. Mr. Wesley seems to regard the " heaven" men- 
tioned in this latter passage, as the proper angelic heaven ; and 
speaking of the " dragon," he remarks that " his ordinary abode 
was in heaven." If heaven were a material world, possibly the 
"dragon" might occasionally be found there — I know not; but that 
heaven should be the "ordinary abode" of "that old serpent, called 
the Devil and Satan," seems very questionable. Besides, the Scrip- 
tures inform us that a place of very different character is " prepared 
for the devil and his angels." Matt. xxv. 41. Heaven is a spiritual 
world, where only those can dwell who are in holy states of life ; 
hence the " dragon," constituted of spirits who were evil and in false 
beliefs, though externally moral and religious, could not have been 
in the true angelic heaven. He was in an " imaginary heaven," 
organized by himself in the world of spirits. In the process of 
judgment he was first cast down from this "heaven" into the 
" earth," i. e., into the lower parts of that world. Subsequently an 
angel came down from heaven (not from the "heaven" of the 
" dragon," surely), and cast him into the " bottomless pit," or hell. 
The passage from Luke describes a similar scene which took place 
during the judgment which the Lord executed in the world of spirits 
while he was on earth. Satan never gains a lodgment in heaven — 
the home of the angels : and within its confines " war" is unknown. 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 27 

has been the gradual clarification of the spiritual atmo- 
sphere of this world, and the progressive emancipation of 
human thought from the trammels of custom and authority, 
not only in the concerns of religion, but also in matters of 
government, philosophy, literature and science. The super- 
incumbent mass of false and evil spirits which had for ages 
rested on the mind of the world, being removed, the thought 
of the race, obedient to immanent divine impulses, re- 
bounded from its state of stupor and feebleness into an 
amazing vigor of life. Men began at once to inquire into 
the significance and value of hoary customs and incompre- 
hensible dogmas, and to demand a reason for the faith to 
which their assent was required. This was a step in advance 
of Luther's work. He proclaimed freedom of thought; 
but failed to see that its inevitable correlative is the ration- 
ality of faith. The new dispensation now in progress 
demands the recognition of both these principles. Method- 
ism, as the first phase of the new Reformation, has recognized 
only the former; but the progress of the movement is 
securing the adoption of the latter as well. 

But the New Church cannot rest on mere regulative prin- 
ciples of thought, important as these may be. It must be 
founded on definite rational truths, drawn from the Word of 
God, and invested with divine authority. These, and not 
inexplicable mysteries, must constitute it a living, comely, 
efficient organism ; for it is only into divine truths received 
rationally by the mind, that the New Heavens can descend. 
It is only by means of these forms that God and the angels 
can enter into spiritual and living conjunction with men. 
Our next step must be, therefore, to unfold that system of 
doctrinal truth on which the New Church, in its distinctive 
character, is founded. 



28 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOKG. 

The first Christian Church, so far as it was a genuine 
Church, rested, as already observed, on the acknowledg- 
ment of the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God, and a life 
according to his commandments. The acknowledgment of 
Jesus as the Son of God involved the doctrine of his 
supreme and absolute divinity; and genuine obedience to 
his commandments could only spring from true love to 
Him, and implicit trust in Him as a Saviour. But it was 
not given to the Christian Church to enter rationally into 
the scheme of doctrine which lay infolded in the historical 
facts of Christianity. The Gospel preached by the apostles 
was one of narrative rather than of dogma ; and of exter- 
nal, rather than internal truth. It appealed chiefly, there- 
fore, to the lower degrees of the mind, to natural thought and 
sentiment, rather than to rational thought and spiritual per- 
ception. The spiritual nature was, it is true, often quick- 
ened in a wonderful manner; and after the close of the 
apostolic age, endless efforts were made to construct a 
rational system of doctrine; but the higher and purer 
forms of Christian experience, depending as they do upon 
rational perceptions of spiritual truth, could not be reached ; 
and the doctrinal systems invented were mutually antago- 
nistic, and, in the light of to-day, grossly absurd. Jesus 
was rightly received as supremely divine ; but he was erro- 
neously set forth as a person distinct from the Father. He 
was properly regarded as the Redeemer of men; but the 
process of redemption, and the ethical principles involved 
in it, were utterly misconceived in the theological systems 
which, at an early day, supplanted the simple teachings of 
the apostles. In the New Church, on the other hand, the 
Gospel proclaimed, while recognizing and harmonizing the 
historical facts of Christianity, presents a system of doctrine 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 29 

fairly deduced from these facts, and satisfying all the 
demands of enlightened reason. 

1. First in importance among the elements of any re- 
ligion is the doctrine concerning God. This, more than 
any other, determines the character of the religion. The 
New Church, therefore, solicits the attention of the world to 
this point in her faith. 

God is one in essence and in person. The uniform lan- 
guage of inspiration is, "The Lord our God is one Lord." 
There is in Him a trinity of essentials, called love, wisdom 
and their divine proceeding, or operative energy. These 
essentials are distinct, but inseparable, and in their neces- 
sary and eternal union constitute the Divine Personality. 
Could they be separated from each other, neither, by itself, 
would constitute a person. To disjoin them would be to 
destroy the personality of God. Love is the inmost prin- 
ciple of the divine nature, and is the root of all moral per- 
fections. Wisdom is its form ; and is the seat of the divine 
ideas, the fountain of all truth. The Holy Spirit is the 
divine effluence, or operative energy proceeding from the 
divine love, through the forms or truths of divine wisdom. 
Man, in a finite way, is, therefore, an image and likeness of 
God, being in his essential nature an organized spiritual 
form. His inmost principle is his will, or affectional 
nature. This takes form and receives direction in his 
understanding, and operates through it to produce results. 
Man, like God, is thus constituted of a trinity of essentials ; 
namely, will, understanding and a proceeding sphere of 
influence or operative energy ; and yet he is but one person. 
God may, therefore — we may say must, under the laws of 
human thought — be conceived of as in the human form, 
since this is constituted of will and understanding, which are 
3* 



30 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

the finite correspondences of Divine Love and Divine 
Wisdom. 

2. The one Divine Being whom we call Jehovah, or God, 
became incarnate for the work of human redemption. He 
appeared in the world as a natural man, subject to the con- 
ditions of finite existence. In this historical manifestation 
of himself he is called the Lord Jesus Christ. No new 
personality was brought into existence by the incarnation ; 
but the one eternal Jehovah is the person who is now named 
the Lord Jesus Christ. In this one divine person, however, 
there are successive degrees and forms of life. As in a 
single human person there are the spiritual, rational, natural 
and corporeal degrees and forms of life, all acting as one 
when the lower are properly subordinated to the higher 
degrees ; so in the Lord Jesus Christ there were successive 
degrees and forms of life, including both the divine and the 
human. The natural mind and corporeal body were derived 
from Mary. Having no human father, the higher degrees 
of mind in him, instead of being finite and human, were 
infinite and divine, being accommodations of the essential 
Divinity to the assumed humanity. It is obvious from this 
that the term Son can, with strict propriety, be applied only 
to the humanity assumed by Jehovah. It is, however, 
sometimes used to include the divine truth, since this is the 
means by which all manifestations of God, including the 
incarnation, are made. It will also be seen that when we 
speak of our Lord Jesus Christ, we include in his one 
personality, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this case, 
the Father signifies the Divine Love ; the Son, the assumed 
humanity, or the Divine Truth, which is manifested in and 
through the humanity; and the Holy Spirit, the Divine 
Effluence proceeding from the assumed and now glorified 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 31 

and Divine Human. The Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, is 
the only God of heaven and earth — the Creator and Re- 
deemer of men, and the proper Object of religious worship. 
3. The design of the incarnation was the redemption of 
the human race. The necessity for this work arose from the 
fact that men, by the process of the fall, had become 
immersed in naturalism and sensuality, and incapacitated 
for receiving the influx of divine truth by interior ways. 
The spiritual degree of the mind was closed ; and it became 
necessary, in order that men might be instructed and 
regenerated, to manifest divine good and truth to them 
externally, in such forms as should be most suitable and 
effective. The Divine-celestial and Divine-spiritual forms 
in which the Divine Truth was given to the men of the 
Adamic and Noetic churches, and in which it is received in- 
the celestial and spiritual heavens, was above the reach of 
their sensual minds. Hence Jehovah clothed himself in our 
natural humanity, and by the glorification of that humanity, 
making it divine to its ultimates, presents his truth in 
divine-natural forms adapted to the percipient and recipient 
states of natural men. By the reception and practice of 
divine truth as presented in the forms and teachings of 
Jehovah's natural life on earth, men may become re- 
generated, and from being merely natural, become spiritual 
or celestial. But the work of redemption included more 
than this. It consisted also in the temptations, com- 
bats and victories of the Lord Jesus Christ. When he 
made his advent, the world of spirits, inspired by the hells, 
was crowding not only upon the heavens, but also upon men 
on earth. Many were obsessed by evil spirits, and deprived 
of reason and moral freedom. They were demoniacs, and 
incapable of being regenerated. There was danger, too, 



32 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

that the infernals would multiply such conquests, and thus 
throw society into utter anarchy, and destroy mankind from 
the face of the earth. 

To avert this result, Jehovah entered himself as a natural 
man into human society, and became a living factor in 
human history on the earthly plane. He assumed a finite 
human organism, infected with all the hereditary evil ten- 
dencies of the race, and therefore capable of being directly 
assaulted by the whole power of the hells and of wicked 
men. In the sphere of this natural humanity he met all 
the temptations of evil and falsity from earth and hell. He 
combated and vanquished them by the power of his divine 
truth brought down to the natural degree. This process 
of temptation, combat and victory, was what caused the 
agonies of Jesus in the garden and on the cross. It was the 
means, too, by which a judgment was executed in the world 
of spirits, and by which also the hells were turned back 
from their encroachments, and reduced to order and subjec- 
tion. Demoniacal possessions thenceforth became less and 
less feasible and frequent. By means of this process of 
temptation and victory, moreover, all hereditary evil was 
expelled from the humanity of the Lord, and it was made 
divine. By the work of redemption, therefore, men were 
relieved of the oppressive domination of the hells, and 
restored to a state of moral freedom. They were rendered 
capable of freely choosing between good and evil, truth and 
falsity, heaven and hell. The way was thus prepared for 
their regeneration. 

4. This view of the process of redemption and atonement, 
not only shows us how " God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto himself;" but also enables us to see how men are 
now "justified freely by his grace through the redemption 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 33 

which is in (or by) Christ Jesus," and regenerated unto a 
new and holy life. The grace and truth by which we are 
enabled to become just and right in the sight of God, reach 
us through the mediumship of the humanity which He 
assumed, and as the result of the redemption which He ac- 
complished by means of that humanity. They come to us 
as his free gift, not as something purchased from Him by 
the expiatory or substitutional sufferings of a second divine 
person. 

In the process of justification, therefore, there is no trans- 
fer of another's merits to us, or imputation of our guilt to a 
suffering substitute; but simply an acknowledgment and 
cordial, trustful acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ as our 
God and Saviour. We recognize Him as the source of all 
good, and truth, and life ; and gratefully own our absolute 
and momentary dependence on Him for all the good and 
truth there is in us, and all the good we are enabled to do. 
Wherever this acknowledgment- exists, and is evidenced by 
sincere obedience to the divine commandments, there the 
work of justification takes place, and Christ is realized as a 
Saviour from sin. One is made just and right in the sight 
of God, and that, not on the ground of his own antecedent 
merits, or of any forensic proceeding, but by the operation 
of the Holy Spirit in him, and his free concurrence in the 
Spirit's work. Justification is but another name for this 
Tightening of the soul, or its re-creation in the image and 
likeness of God. 

Stripped of all forensic and physical analogies, which, in 
relation to this subject, are misleading and false, if taken in 
their literal force, the process of the soul's salvation from 
sin, may be conceived of as included wholly either in the work 
of justification, regeneration, or sanctification ; and any 



34 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

attempt to divide the process into well-defined successive 
stages, designated by these theological terms, must originate 
either in a misconception of the nature of the process, or in 
an erroneous idea of the true force of these terms. The 
terms justification, regeneration and sanctification serve 
merely to indicate different aspects of one and the same 
work, or the same work viewed in different relations. 
Viewed in its relation to the divine law, the work of salva- 
tion is called justification ; viewed in its relation to the 
development of a new life in the soul, it is called regenera- 
tion ; and viewed in its relation to one's spiritual state, it is 
called sanctification. But perfect justification implies perfect 
regeneration and sanctification ; perfect regeneration implies 
perfect justification and sanctification ; and perfect sanctifi- 
cation implies perfect justification and regeneration. Either 
work involves both of the others. And whether the process 
of salvation be regarded as a work of justification, regenera- 
tion, or sanctification, it is effected, in all cases, in precisely 
one and the same way, namely, by the cordial and trustful 
acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ as the source of all 
spiritual good, and by a life of sincere obedience to His 
commandments. 

5. The New Church propounds also a new interpretation 
of the Scripture teaching concerning the resurrection. Man 
is regarded as a spiritual being, beginning existence in, and 
temporarily clothed with a material body, but capable of 
living on as a real man, in perfect human form, after the 
material body is laid aside. As a spiritual being, he is not 
a simple, unorganized substance, but a perfectly organized 
man, with spiritual members, organs, and functions corre- 
sponding in most respects with those of his natural body; 
and as there are different kinds of material substance which 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 35 

enter into man's natural body, so there are different kinds 
of spiritual substance, which enter into his spiritual organ- 
ism, and nourish and strengthen its several parts. Man's 
natural body, moreover, takes its human shape and beauti- 
ful symmetry from the indwelling soul; and loses it when 
the soul, or real man departs. Man's resurrection is his 
withdrawal from the material body, which takes place im- 
mediately after death. What we, judging from natural 
sight, call death, the angels, judging from spiritual sight, 
call resurrection. The real man, properly speaking, does 
not die at all : but lives right on. The natural body dies, 
and is laid aside never again to be resumed ; but the spirit, 
which is the real man, is raised up at once into a new life — 
generally on the third day after apparent death. The 
resurrection of the natural body is never spoken of in the 
Scriptures, but only the resurrection of the " dead ;" that is, 
of persons who have died, or passed out of this natural life. 
"Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the 
bush when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and 
the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a 
God of the dead, but of the living." (Luke xx. 37-8.) 
These patriarchs had died and experienced the resurrection, 
and were then, in the Saviour's day, living persons ; and this 
is instanced by Him to show that the dead are raised — raised 
up when the body is laid down; not that their material 
bodies will be raised some thousands of years hence. 

Paul also teaches the same doctrine, showing that, as the 
germ infolded in the body of a seed, throws off its cover- 
ing and is developed into a plant or stalk bearing fruit, so 
the soul, at death, throws off the natural body, rises a 
spiritual and glorious body, and enters upon a spiritual and 
immortal life. For " there is a natural body, and there is a 



36 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

spiritual body," and the natural body, having served its 
purpose as a means by which the spirit could gain the 
development requisite to fit it for entering into self-conscious, 
personal existence in the spiritual world, can be laid aside, 
never more to be resumed, without impairing the powers and 
functions of the real man; just as the chrysalid in which the 
butterfly is formed, having served its use, is cast away never 
to be re-occupied by its liberated and beautified possessor. 
Sad, indeed, would it be to think that the bright and happy 
immortals who now exult in the enlargement and joy of a 
spiritual state of existence, must, at some future day, re-enter 
a material organism, and become again subject to the dis- 
abilities of a physical existence, and the limitations of time 
and space. 

6. The world into which men are ushered at death is a 
spiritual and not a material world. Having no longer 
any physical senses, they are incapable of discerning mate- 
rial objects and earthly scenes; just as now, before our 
spiritual senses are opened, we are unable to discern the 
objects and scenery of the spiritual world. That world, 
moreover, being spiritual, and not subject to the conditions 
of time and space, cannot be conceived of as locally distant 
from the earth where we now dwell. No journey through 
space is required in order to reach it. As to our spiritual 
nature we are in it already, not consciously, it is true, but 
really; and could our spiritual senses be opened, as were 
those of the Hebrew prophets, John the revelator, and 
Swedenborg, we should see at once that we are now in that 
world, and in society with spiritual beings. That world, 
too, is no cloud-land, or ethereal realm, where the inhabitants 
float in the air eternally, but a real, substantial world — 
more so, indeed, than this world ; for spirit is substance. 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 37 

There is material substance, and there is spiritual sub- 
stance, each possessing its distinctive properties. The earth 
is composed of the former, and the spiritual world, of the 
latter. Our natural bodies are composed of material sub- 
stance : our spiritual bodies, of spiritual substance. Spirit 
is more real and substantial than matter, in like manner as 
causes are more real and substantial than effects ; and things 
sustaining, than things sustained. To the perceptions of 
angels the spiritual world, spiritual objects and spiritual beings 
are as discernible and tangible as material things are to our 
natural senses. Hence the angels, or glorified spirits of men, 
(for all the angels and all devils were once men on this or some 
other earth), walk on solid ground, though it is spiritual ; and 
see, stretching away in the seeming distance, landscapes of 
surpassing beauty ; and dwell in mansions which excel in 
magnificence all that the natural mind has ever imagined. 
The spiritual world embraces the three heavens, the three 
corresponding hells, and Hades, or the world of spirits, 
which is intermediate between the heavens and the hells. 
The three heavens correspond to the three degrees of the 
human mind ; and the three hells are the inversion and per- 
version of these degrees. In the highest or celestial heaven, 
love is supreme ; in the second or spiritual heaven, truth 
leading to good is paramount ; and in the first or natural 
heaven, law leading to obedience and peace, prevails. 
Hades is the first receptacle of souls after death. It is here 
that the judgment takes place, and that men are prepared 
for admission to some heavenly society, or stripped of all 
disguises, and discovered to be fit only for the society of 
devils. It is not a probationary state, where real inward 
character can be changed, but a world where the inward 
character formed here, can be developed and brought clearly 



38 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

to view. This is the process of judgment ; and when it is 
completed upon any individual, he voluntarily betakes him- 
self, if evil, to his own hell ; and, if good, he is conducted 
by angels to his congenial heaven. Each finds his place in 
a heavenly or infernal society perfectly suited to his own 
character, or interior quality of life. The evil suffer pun- 
ishments, not from God, but from their infernal associates, 
whenever they infringe on the rights of others; but the 
most deplorable feature of their lot in hell, is the degrada- 
tion of being which they experience as the result of sin. 
Yet the Divine Mercy is ever over them, and is continually 
in the effort to mitigate their miseries and restrain their 
evils. But their regeneration is impossible. They undergo 
an external reformation as the result of the punishments 
inflicted upon them ; and are withheld by fear from outward 
evil acts, just as certain animals may be controlled by fear 
of the lash, while their real nature remains unchanged. 
But conscience being utterly extinct in lost souls, they can 
never be led to genuine repentance. They remain forever 
self-degraded and imbruted in their dark and foul abodes. 

7. The doctrine of the divine inspiration and supreme 
authority of the Sacred Scriptures, also occupies a very im- 
portant place in the theological system of the New Church. 
Some of the books of the received canon, are, however, 
accredited with a higher degree of inspiration and authority 
than others. These are the books of Moses, Joshua, Judges, 
Samuel, Kings, the Psalms, all the prophets, the four 
Gospels, and the Apocalypse. The remainder are regarded 
with great respect as sacred writings, valuable for the 
historical facts which they record, and also for their religious 
and ethical teachings ; but not inspired in the highest sense, 
nor in all points infallible. The former are pre-eminently 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 39 

the Word of God, dictated by Him through angels to men, 
and written in language strictly correspondential. Thus 
the letter of the Word is the natural form which divine 
truth takes when brought down to the apprehension of the 
natural mind. It contains, moreover, an internal or spiritual 
sense, which is involved in the literal sense as the cause is 
involved in its effect, or the soul in the body. This sense 
cannot be apprehended by the natural mind ; but is only dis- 
cerned by the spiritual mind. As there are different degrees 
of perceptive power and knowing capacity in the human 
mind, which are opened successively in those who are 
being regenerated and intellectually developed, so the divine 
ideas, in their descent from God through the heavens, take 
on successively lower and adapted forms of expression. 
Thus for every degree of knowing capacity, there is a cor- 
responding degree of the knowable. 

There is, therefore, in the written Word of God, form 
within form ; sense within sense ; truth within truth ; and 
each lower is the exact correspondence of some higher truth. 
Practically, we speak only of the internal sense and the 
literal sense. The angels are in the former ; men are mainly 
in the latter. The internal sense was but very partially 
opened to the first Christian Church, the true key to it 
having been lost. But it is now being opened, the key to it 
having been restored through Emanuel Swedenborg. This 
sense is rational and harmonious throughout. It enables us, 
also, to reconcile the apparent discrepancies of the literal 
sense. 

There are, however, portions of the Word which were never 
intended to be understood literally at all, but only as sym- 
bolical or allegorical forms of divine truth. The first eleven 
chapters of Genesis and nearly the whole of the Apocalypse 



40 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

are of this character. Their truth and intended meaning lie 
almost wholly in the internal sense. A large part of the 
prophetical writings is of the same character. Much of the 
Word of God has, therefore, remained till recently sealed 
and unintelligible to men. This is especially true of the 
Apocalypse. And yet so open and rational is the literal 
sense in many parts of the Word, that they who follow it are 
regenerated and saved. In other words, the spiritual sense 
often appears upon the very surface of the letter, so that he 
who will may read and understand it. But no coherent and 
rational system of doctrine has ever been constructed by 
those who recognize only the literal sense of the Scriptures. 
The letter of the Word yields rational doctrine only when 
interpreted in the light of the spiritual sense. The spiritual 
sense, though unattainable by man's unaided reason, yet 
illuminates it, and is seen to be in harmony with it. It 
challenges the strictest scrutiny of reason, and satisfies all its 
demands. The New Church, therefore, asks no assent to 
mysteries, but only to rational truths. There are, it is true, 
mysteries in God and in nature ; but they are not for us. They 
are not matters of faith. They are simply matters of which 
we are ignorant; and knowing nothing about them, we 
believe nothing about them. We have rational evidence 
that God is ; hence we believe this fact. But the mode of 
his existence is a mystery ; and we believe nothing about it. 
We have sufficient evidence that the blade of grass grows ; 
but how it grows we know not ; hence we affirm nothing and 
believe nothing concerning it. The mode of its growth is to 
us, not a matter of faith, but of ignorance. So of our whole 
scheme of doctrine. It is made up, not of mysteries, but of 
rational spiritual truths. It rests on rational . evidence, at 
the same time that it bears the impress of divine authority. 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 41 

And the most satisfying and indubitable proof of its divine 
authority, is its perfect rationality. 

8. Closely allied to the doctrine of the inspiration of the 
Scriptures and the existence of the internal sense, is that of 
the second coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his first 
coming he manifested divine truth in its natural forms in 
the facts of his earthly life and in the words he spake. 
" The AYord was made of flesh ;" that is, it took on the forms 
of an ordinary human life, the better to adapt itself to the 
states of gross and sensual men. It cannot be necessary for 
the Lord to come again in this manner. He is not so poor 
in expedients that He needs to repeat himself. His second 
coming must be, not to the natural, but to the spiritual per- 
ceptions of men. It must be a revelation of his spiritual, 
not of his natural body ; and of divine truth in its spiritual, 
not in its natural forms. His second coming must be effected, 
therefore, by the opening of the rational and spiritual per- 
ceptions of men to discern the spiritual sense of the Word, 
or the inward nature and spiritual glory of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The literal sense of the Word is compared to 
"clouds" which obscure the light of the sun; and as the 
light of the sun breaks through the clouds, or they disperse 
and vanish away, allowing the full splendor of the sun to 
shine upon us ; so the effulgent spiritual sense of the Word 
is now breaking through the clouds of the literal sense, and 
enlightening the minds of men. Hence it is written, "Thy 
strength, O Lord, is in the clouds." " Clouds and darkness 
are round about Him; righteousness and judgment are the 
habitation of his throne." " Behold he cometh with clouds, 
and every eye shall see him." " They shall see the Son of 
Man coming in the clouds of heaven." In these and similar 

passages "clouds" are the symbols of the literal sense of the 
4* 



42 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Word of God. The Lord comes in the clouds of heaven, 
therefore, when the light of the internal sense breaks forth 
from the literal sense. This is the second coming of the 
Lord ; and it is now going on. It has been in progress for 
more than a hundred years. It was this that effected the 
last judgment in the world of spirits in 1757; and inaugu- 
rated the grandest religious movement ever witnessed upon 
earth. This movement, of which Methodism has been the 
initial stage, but which in its full unfolding is to be recog- 
nized as a New Dispensation of divine truth, is destined to 
sweep on, till all nations shall become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and his Christ. The divine purpose, "Behold I make 
all things new," is every year realizing a glorious fulfillment. 
A new state of the human mind in reference to religion ; a 
state characterized by freedom, rationality, spirituality, and 
advancing charity and intelligence — all of which are essen- 
tials of the genuine New Church — everywhere prevails, and 
is revolutionizing the theology and ecclesiastical institutions 
of the world. 

9. Finally, the New Church inculcates the paramount 
importance of a life of charity. Love to God and love to 
man, evidenced by obedience to the divine commandments 
and devotion to the practical uses of life, are cardinal prin- 
ciples of the true Christian religion, and take precedence of 
all dogmatic teachings. Charity which finds expression in 
the relief of the poor, the sick and the suffering, is not to be 
neglected ; but the life of genuine charity comprehends more 
than this; it consists also in the faithful performance of 
our several uses as artisans, tradesmen, professional men, 
public officers, husbands and wives, parents and children, 
friends and neighbors. He who performs well some use by 
which he earns an honest livelihood, thereby benefits society ; 



WHAT IS THE NEW CHURCH? 43 

and, provided he acts from a religious motive, undergoes a 
gradual process of regeneration. Swedenborg says : 

" Charity extends itself much more widely than to the 
poor and indigent ; it also consists in doing what is right in 
every work, and our duty in every office. If a judge does 
justice for the sake of justice, he exercises charity ; if he 
punishes the guilty and absolves the innocent, he exercises 
charity, for thus he consults the welfare of his fellow-cit- 
izens and of his country. The priest who teaches truth, and 
leads to good, for the sake of truth and good, exercises 
charity. But he who does such things for the sake of self 
and the world, does not exercise charity, because he does 
not love his neighbor, but himself." (The Heavenly Doc- 
trines, n. 10.) 

In presenting this summary of the doctrines of the New 
Church, I have said nothing of the beautiful and profound 
system of philosophy which underlies them all, and which 
discovers to us more clearly their perfect rationality. My 
present limits do not allow me to give even a digest of this 
system ; and I must content myself by referring those who 
desire to acquaint themselves with it, to Swedenborg himself, 
especially to his treatise on the " Divine Love and Wisdom." 
I am aware, too, that many things which I have said will 
appear obscure and, perhaps, irrational in consequence of 
the brevity which I have been compelled to study. The 
New Church reader will readily understand, moreover, that, 
on every point of doctrine which I have presented, I have 
been under the necessity of suppressing a multitude of 
thoughts which crowded upon me for utterance, and of 
selecting only a few where all seemed equally important. 
The meager statements which I have given, however, may 
serve as finger-points to the wonderful theological and 



44 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

philosophical system to which I invite the attention of all 
thoughtful minds. 

From the doctrinal statement I have given, it will readily 
appear that a new ecclesiastical organization may properly 
enough be established upon it ; and that such an organiza- 
tion may, without any offensive or exclusive assumptions, be 
styled a New Church. It should be borne in mind, however, 
that all existing religious bodies, in so far as they are 
recipients and organs of genuine spiritual life from the 
Lord, are of the New Dispensation, and imbued with its 
genius and spirit. They are all being made new ; and are 
destined, we believe, not to be consummated and destroyed, 
but to be filled and transformed more and more with the life 
and light of the New Jerusalem. 

swedenborg's relation to the new church. 

Here the inquiry will naturally arise, What relation does 
Emanuel Swedenborg sustain to the New Church ? In reply 
it should be observed at the outset, that he did not pretend 
to found or authorize a new ecclesiastical organization. We 
have no evidence that he expected or wished that any new 
religious body would or should be established on the basis 
of the doctrines he propounded. Speaking of the state of 
the church hereafter, he says : 

"It will be similar, indeed, in the outward form, but dis- 
similar in the inward. To outward appearance divided 
churches will exist as heretofore; their doctrines will be 
taught as heretofore ; and the same religions as now will 
exist among the Gentiles. But henceforth the man of the 
church will be in a more free state of thinking on matters 
of faith, that is, on spiritual things which relate to heaven, 



45 

because spiritual liberty has been restored to him." {Last 
Judgment, n. 73.) 

The New Church which he proclaimed, therefore, was not 
external and ecclesiastical, but internal and spiritual. He 
doubtless believed that the theology of existing churches 
w T ould undergo great modifications as the result of this " free 
state of thinking ;" but he seems to have had no thought of 
becoming the leader of a sect. And very many who now 
receive his views, would willingly remain in or attach them- 
selves to some one of the old religious bodies, were they 
allowed to do so, and subjected to no disabilities for their 
peculiar beliefs. Swedenborg's sentiments were catholic and 
generous. He hoped that all the churches might be filled 
with a purer life, receive more rational and spiritual views of 
divine truth, and cultivate a broader and more practical 
charity. For this end he believed that he was raised up ; 
and for this end he labored. He did not profess, however, 
to give us a new Bible to supersede the old one. He aimed 
to make the old one more intelligible, by unfolding its long 
hidden treasures of wisdom ; and giving us the key to the 
true interpretation of those portions of it w^hich had hitherto 
baffled the skill of biblical students. He sought to give to 
the world a rational statement of the doctrines of Christian- 
ity, and to furnish a satisfactory solution of those vital ques- 
tions relating to God, the soul and the future life, which, for 
a century past, have so deeply agitated the minds of men. 
His writings, therefore, are a new revelation, or unfolding 
of divine truth — truth already contained in the Sacred Scrip- 
tures, but undiscerned by men. He has also disclosed to us 
many important laws and facts relating to the economy of 
the spiritual world; and we accept these disclosures, not 
merely on his authority, but mainly on the ground of their 



46 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

conformity to the teachings of Scripture, the verdict of rea- 
son, the testimony of experience, and the known laws of 
man's spiritual being. 

The question now properly arises, Why should it be 
thought strange that God should raise up and qualify Swed- 
enborg as the herald of a New Dispensation of divine truth? 
Is it because of anything exceptionable in his previous 
character? If so, might not a careful scrutiny into the 
early life of Paul, David, and the Hebrew prophets, bring 
to light facts which would invalidate their claims as messen- 
gers of God? But Swedenborg does not claim to have been 
called to this high office on account of any personal merit in 
himself. It was necessary that some one should be chosen, 
and the divine choice fell upon him. We have, however, 
the amplest evidence of his fitness for this great mission. 
His moral and intellectual powers were of the highest order ; 
and his attainments in science, philosophy, and general 
learning were unsurpassed by any mind of the 18th century. 
Surely it will not be alleged that these qualifications were 
any disadvantage to him in the work of giving to the world 
a rational system of religious truth. No such qualifications 
existed in the ancient prophets; nor were they needed. 
Their mission was to receive divine truth as dictated to them 
by the Lord through the ministry of angels, and reduce it to 
writing. Often they were but amanuenses, or unconscious 
agents in this work. It was not given to them to enter 
rationally into the communications they received. But 
Swedenborg was required to unfold the interior significance 
of these divine communications, and place them in rational 
light. His work was thus more difficult than that of the 
prophets. It was necessary, therefore, not only that he 
should be divinely called, and spiritually regenerated and 



47 

illumined; but also intellectually educated, instructed and 
developed in a pre-eminent degree. 

It is objected, however, that his visions of the spiritual 
world are incredible, and throw suspicion upon his whole 
system. This objection can scarcely be insisted on by any 
one who receives the Bible as a divine revelation ; for this 
contains narrations of the same character. Elisha and his 
servant were in open vision of the spiritual world, when 
they saw " the mountain full of horses and chariots of fire." 
Paul was in the same state when he beheld the wonders of 
the "third heaven," and heard things which it was not pos- 
sible for him to utter. John had experience of open spiritual 
vision when the wonderful scenes described in the Apoca- 
lypse passed before him. And all men, as spiritual beings, 
possess spiritual senses, which, if opened in this world, enable 
them to discern objects and scenes in the spiritual world, at 
the same time that, with their natural senses, they discern 
natural objects and the scenery of the natural world. There 
is nothing particularly remarkable, therefore, in the assump- 
tion of Swedenborg, that he was, during the last twenty- 
seven years of his life, while in the exercise of his holy office, 
endowed with open spiritual vision. The claim will not seem 
extravagant to one who understands that the spirit within 
us is the real man, possessed of every essential human organ 
and function. Especially will it not seem unreasonable, 
when we consider that the end for which this endowment was 
granted was, that he might be thereby fitted for the fulfill- 
ment of his mission. 

But it is assumed by some that the canon of Revelation 
was completed with the Apocalypse ; and that no divinely 
authorized and plenarily inspired communications of truth 
have since been made, and that none can be made. Admit- 



48 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

ting that this opinion, which, as generally held, rests on the 
false interpretation of a single text of Scripture, is true, it 
does not invalidate the claim of Swedenborg, or lessen the 
value of anything he has written. It may never be neces- 
sary, probably never will be, for the Lord to add another 
volume to the present Word, which ends with the Apocalypse. 
The Word of God is distinguished from all other writings 
by this circumstance : that it contains within the meaning 
of the letter, an internal sense which proceeds by orderly 
gradations up to what is absolutely divine. Swedenborg's 
writings do not profess to be written in this style. It is not 
pretended that they possess an internal sense. They simply 
claim to record the rational perceptions of divine truth 
which the Lord enabled him to gain while reading the 
Word, and to narrate the scenes which he witnessed in the 
spiritual world. And the value which his writings possess 
above those of other great and good men in modern times, 
consists in the fact of his divine call as the herald of a New 
Dispensation, and his superior illumination and preparation 
as a teacher of divine truth. 

It is also worthy of observation, that the state of religious 
thought about the middle of the last century, was such as 
to render the advent of a divinely authorized expounder of 
Christian doctrine, desirable. For fifteen hundred years 
men had been endeavoring to construct a coherent and 
rational system of Christian doctrine, but in vain. What 
one generation of creed builders elaborated with great care, 
and pronounced the very essence of divine truth, the next 
generation would demolish or remodel, and in turn declare 
its work perfect. The garments of Jesus were thus divided. 
The literal teachings of the Word were arrayed against 



swedenboeg's relation to the new church. 49 

each other ; while the seamless vesture of the Son of Man, 
the harmonious and coherent spiritual sense of the Word, 
was unrecognized. Christianity was losing its power, and, 
among cultivated minds, falling into contempt, through the 
multiplication of absurd and contradictory dogmas. The 
Bible was assailed on all sides by its enemies, as false in its 
history and pernicious in its moral tendency. Its friends, 
too, confessed themselves unable to offer a rational solution 
of its many enigmas and apparent incongruities. Owing, 
too, to the quickening of scientific thought and the progress 
of biblical criticism, these incongruities were becoming 
more conspicuous and insuperable every year. Dr. Bur- 
nett in his Sacred Theory of the Earth remarks (I quote 
from Barrett's Lectures, page 66): 

" But some divine person may appear before the second 
coming of our Saviour, as these (Elias and John the 
Baptist) before his first coming ; and by giving a new light 
and life to the Christian doctrine, may dissipate the mists of 
error, and abolish all those little controversies amongst good 
men, and the divisions and animosities that spring from 
them ; enlarging their spirits by greater discoveries, and 
uniting them all in the bonds of love and charity." 
Mr. Benson, in his Hulsean Lectures, says : 
" Darkness is upon the face of the prophetic creation, and 
the spirit of God must move, ere it can be broken and dis- 
persed ; and we must either wait for some inspired interpreter 
to unravel its intricacy, or sit down in contented expecta- 
tion for that period of blessedness, in which the difficulties 
of Christianity shall be swallowed up in the glory of the 
Second Coming of the Lord, as the seeming inconsistencies 
of the Jewish scheme, were illuminated by the brightness 
of his first." 
5 



50 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Mr. Pearson, in his Prophetical Character of the Apoc- 
alypse, remarks : 

" From considering the peculiar character of these pro- 
phecies, we may derive reasonable ground for believing that 
God would vouchsafe some future revelation of his will, in 
which the indistinct parts of them would be more completely 
cleared up." 

Mr. Myers, in his " Conciones Basilicas," says : 

" What we desire is a Newtonian theory of prophecy, 
which shall explain them all. And why should we not look 
forward to some theological Newton, who may be permitted 
to throw the light of chastened reason on the firmament of 
prophecy, and be hailed as a divinely sent teacher of the 
church in the mysteries of the future ? Surely, one chief 
means of disciplining the mind, and preparing the way for 
such an expounder of holy things, is a strong conviction 
that, on the whole, previous expounders have failed." 

Thus have some of the leading minds of the Christian 
church unconsciously borne witness to the reasonableness of 
the claim which we make for Swedenborg. It needs but a 
careful study of his writings to satisfy one that he meets, in 
the amplest manner, the requirements of these writers. He 
has given " a new light and life " — the light of reason and 
the life of truth — to Christian doctrine. If not an "in- 
spired interpreter," in the fullest sense, he is a divinely 
illumined interpreter, who has thrown a flood of light 
upon the realm of prophecy, especially upon the Apocalypse, 
and brought order out of apparently inextricable confusion 
in numerous passages of the Word of God. 

What Newton did for science, Swedenborg has done for 
theology : he has announced and demonstrated the most im- 
portant laws of the spiritual universe, and those principles 



swedenborg's relation to the new church. 51 

of biblical interpretation, which enable the student of 
theology to deduce consistent and rational doctrines from the 
letter of the Divine Word ; just as the student of nature 
deduces sound conclusions from natural pheuomena by the 
application of true principles of science. 

Before leaving this part of my subject, it is proper that 
I should give Swedenborg's own statement concerning his 
call to this sacred office. In 1771, a year before his death, 
in answer to a letter from the Landgrave of Hesse-Darm- 
stadt, he writes : 

" The Lord our Saviour had foretold that he would come 
again into the world, and that he would establish there a 
New Church. He has given this prediction in the Apoc- 
alypse (21st and 22d chaps.), and also in several places in the 
Evangelists. But as He cannot come again into the world 
in person, it was necessary that He should do it by means 
of a man, who should not only receive the doctrine of this 
New Church in his understanding, but also publish it by 
printing : and as the Lord had prepared me for this office 
from my infancy, He has manifested himself in person 
before me, his servant, and sent me to fill it. This took 
place in the year 1743. He afterwards opened the sight of 
my spirit, and thus introduced me into the spiritual world, 
and granted me to see the heavens and many of their 
wonders, and also the hells, and to speak with angels and 
spirits, and this continually for twenty-seven years. I de- 
clare in all truth that such is the fact. This favor of the 
Lord in regard to me, has only taken place for the sake of 
the New Church which I have mentioned above, the doctrine 
of which is contained in my writings." 

This statement may be dismissed with a shrug and a sneer; 
but the candor, sincerity, and intelligence of him who makes 



52 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

it, remain to confront the skeptic. Swedenborg was too 
honest a man to attempt to deceive us ; too intelligent and 
wise to be easily deceived ; and too calm, dignified, and con- 
sistent in all his writings, to be charged with insanity. 



RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 

We are prepared now to consider intelligently the rela- 
tions of Methodism to the New Church. And, first, it will 
be observed that these two systems synchronize in their 
origin. While the processes preliminary to the last general 
judgment were taking place in the spiritual world, and the 
Lord was preparing a spiritual basis for the New Church 
which He was about to establish on earth, there appeared in 
this world, as the result of these movements, the new and 
remarkable development of religious activity called Method- 
ism. While Swedenborg was undergoing, during the first 
half of the 18th century, a work, of discipline, instruction 
and spiritual regeneration, designed to fit him as the Lord's 
instrument for conveying to men the doctrines of the New 
Dispensation, Whitfield and the Wesleys were qualifying 
themselves for the Christian ministry, and initiating more 
earnest and successful methods of evangelizing effort. While 
Methodism was assuming organic form in the classes and 
societies raised up by John Wesley, and gaining its first 
wonderful triumphs under the field preaching of its great 
apostles, Swedenborg was gradually coming into the clear 
and open spiritual vision requisite to fit him for the high 
office to which the Lord had called him ; and events of the 
most momentous character were hastening to a crisis in the 
spiritual world. In 1757 the judgment process was com- 
pleted. The imaginary heavens were dispersed; and the 



RELATIONS OE METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 53 

new heavens were organized and prepared for the transmis- 
sion of the light and life of the New Age to men. 

Following closely upon this consummation was an exhi- 
bition of unprecedented power in the great Methodist ref- 
ormation. " The year 1760 was signalized by a more extra- 
ordinary religious interest than had hitherto prevailed among 
the Methodist societies. Here began, says Wesley, 'that 
glorious work of sanctification which had been nearly at 
a stand for twenty years.' .... It continued to advance 
for several years. In 1762 he remarks that his brother had 
some years before said to him that the day of the Methodist 
Pentecost had not fully come ; but he doubted not it would, 
and that then they should hear of persons sanctified as fre- 
quently as they had thus far heard of them justified. ' It 
was now fully come,' adds Wesley. His journal for suc- 
cessive years records the spread of this higher Christian ex- 
perience, and its salutary effects on all the interests of his 
societies." — Stevens' History of Methodism. Vol. I., page 402. 

Thus the events which took place in the spiritual world 
in connection with the formation of the New Church, find 
their counterpart in the successive stages of the Methodist 
movement ; and are revealed in them, as causes are revealed 
in their effects. 

The characteristics of Methodism, moreover, are such as 
would naturally attend the first developments of the New 
Dispensation. The paramount object of this Dispensation is 
to establish the true doctrine concerning the Lord Jesus 
Christ by identifying him as the supreme and only God. 
And although Methodism has failed to grasp the whole truth 
on this subject, yet it has magnified the name of Jesus, as 
qo party in the church had ever done before, and thus pre- 
pared the way for the full recognition of his supreme and 



54 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

absolute Divinity. In the spiritual consciousness of Meth- 
odism, the Lord Jesus Christ has occupied a higher place, 
and shone with a more resplendent light, than in any pre- 
vious state of the Church. Practically, therefore, in nu- 
merous instances, his divine-human form has fully absorbed 
the attention of the worshipper, and caused him to forget, 
for the time at least, the other persons of his supposititious 
trinity. It was scarcely to be expected . that the doctrine of 
the underived and sole divinity of Jesus would at once sup- 
plant the traditional dogma of three divine persons. Though 
the true doctrine upon this subject was, at the very outset, 
propounded in the writings of the New Church, yet its de- 
velopment in the consciousness of Christendom, has neces- 
sarily been gradual. There is but a step, however, between 
the Christ of Methodism and the Christ of the New Jeru- 
salem ; and yet this step is one of vast theoretical and prac- 
tical significance. 

The office of Methodism as introductory to the New 
Church, is further seen in its doctrine of a free salvation 
available to all. It is thus identified unmistakably with 
the new age of Christian progress. It harmonizes with it 
also in the stress which it lays on good works both as 
necessary to be observed in the search after God, and also 
as the condition of continued acceptance with Him. It has 
taught, moreover, quite as clearly as the specific New 
Church itself, that " a deed or work, in itself considered, is 
nothing but an effect which derives its soul and life from 
the will and thought ; and that such as are the will and 
thought which produce a deed or work, such also is the 
deed or work." It has, however, betrayed its character 
as a transitional movement by holding in connection with 
this doctrine, ethical and theological principles utterly in- 



RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 55 

congruous with it ; as when it teaches the doctrine of justifi- 
cation by faith only, and speaks of our best services as- 
needing to be covered and supplemented by the merits of 
Christ in order to be made acceptable to God. 

In like manner, the active and marvelous spiritual ex- 
periences of Methodism, in the awakening, conversion, 
regeneration and illumination of souls, are such as ought 
to be looked for in the opening stages of New Church 
life. The influx of mightier spiritual forces into the 
minds of men, would not at once revolutionize the ter- 
minology and formulas of religious experience. The first 
effect would naturally be rather to intensify the style of 
Christian experience already prevalent. The communities 
in the Spiritual world through which this influx must 
descend, and by which it must be modified, would be at first 
composed largely of minds that had been educated and 
fashioned under the old forms of Christian thought. Hence 
the early experiences of Methodism would not be separated 
by any wide chasm from the better forms of experience 
already known in the church. They would differ mainly in 
intensity at first, and only change as new and more rational 
views of divine truth should come to prevail. 

Among the fruits of this intensified form of Christian 
experience, may be noted the aggressive evangelical agencies 
that sprang into existence toward the close of the eighteenth, 
and during the earlier decades of the nineteenth century. 
None will question the indebtedness of the world to the 
philanthropic spirit of Methodism, as diffused abroad in all 
the churches, for these schemes of Christian propagandism. 
It is equally evident that they are such as the inauguration 
of a new, broad, and rational view of Christianity would 
summon into existence. But it has also been the aim of 



56 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

Methodism to exalt spiritual above ecclesiastical Christianity. 
It has reasserted with great emphasis the declaration of 
Jesus, " The kingdom of God is within you." It has denied 
the divine authority of any particular forms of church 
order ; and holds all, its own included, subject to the rule of 
expediency. Whatever churchly forms may seem to promise 
the best results, are held to be lawful. Christianity is 
spiritual life ; and all the externals of the Lord's kingdom, 
must be made subservient to the development of this life in 
the hearts of men. In this particular, too, Methodism pre- 
sents a very important phase of the New Church. 

But as I have already intimated, Methodism combines 
with many rare excellencies, some glaring errors ; some of 
the worst falsities of the traditional theology and some of 
the worst evils of a sensuous style of piety, with many of 
the best elements of New Church doctrine and life. It 
illustrates the truth of the saying, that the present is ever 
under a mortgage to the past. Methodism is Christianity 
in transition from the first Christian, to the New Jerusalem 
Dispensation. It must needs, therefore, exhibit both imper- 
fectly. It must bring into the New Age, some of the defects 
of the consummated Age ; just as it introduces into the latter 
some of the elements of the former. But though it is a 
mediatorial system, it is yet a progressive one. It is 
liquidating the mortgage which the error-blind past left 
upon it ; and will execute a lighter mortgage upon the future 
than any previous generation has left upon the estate of 
humanity. 

It will further illustrate the relations of Methodism to the 
New Church to observe, that the main elements of power in 
it, have been distinctive New Church elements. The influx 
which has given it life, has come from the new heavens. 



EELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 57 

Its most effective ideas are in harmony with the new scheme 
of doctrine. The infinite love of God to men ; Christ as 
the manifestation of this love; the absolute divinity of 
Jesus ; his benignity toward sinful men ; the imperative 
demand for sincere repentance and trust in Christ as a con- 
dition of pardon ; the necessity of good works ; the doctrine 
of moral freedom and responsibility; the probationary 
character of the present life ; the divine authority of the 
Sacred Scriptures; the duty of immediate and entire sub- 
mission to the will of God ; and the doctrine of immortality 
in weal or woe, according to the character formed here ; — 
these are the ideas with which the ministers of Methodism 
have gained their victories ; and these ideas have been most 
effective when presented most in harmony with the general 
scheme of New Church doctrine. The introduction of such 
discordant ideas as the literal wrath of God, the divine 
tripersonality, the vicarious atonement, the imputation of 
Christ's merits to the believing soul, and the doctrine of 
salvation by faith alone, has but served to confuse the mind 
of the inquirer, and postpone or vitiate the process of 
spiritual recovery. 

The Methodist Quarterly Review, Jan., 1869, page 159, 
says: 

"Our impression is that less reliance on the constant 
preaching of hell-fire has, with exceptions, always been one 
of the differences of Methodism from Calvinism. Dr. 
Clarke on 2 Cor. v. 11, reprobates the ' constant declama- 
tion on hell and perdition.' Rev. Thomas Vasey, of the 
British Conference, speaking of the conversion at Newcastle 
of ' some of the worst specimens of humanity,' says : ' Now, 
with him it was a maxim not to preach hell and damnation 
to such people, but always take the most encouraging 



58 WESLEY AND SWEDE NBORG. 

view of the subjects, such as the love of God, the power 
of the Holy Ghost, the possibility of getting saved and 
elevated.' We heard a leading Methodist revivalist, a few 
years since, remark, ' that a few evenings previous he had 
put a check upon the flow of penitent feeling by preaching 
too much of a terror sermon.' In this respect, as in a great 
many others, we suspect that Methodism has anticipated the 
age." 

When, therefore, I am told that the wonderful success of 
Methodism in securing the regeneration of men, is an attes- 
tation of the truth of its doctrines, I answer, yes : it is a 
proof of the truth of some of its doctrines. Such results 
cannot be effected by unmixed error. But so far as many 
points of Methodist theology are concerned, success has been 
achieved, not by them, but in spite of them, and by the 
glorious truths held in connection with them. It is also 
worthy of remark that the successes of Methodism have 
been achieved mainly in the work of converting and train- 
ing souls; and this, by the faithful application of the 
simpler truths of the Gospel. We rejoice that Methodism 
has done this work so well. In real importance it over- 
shadows all other work, and challenges the co-operation of 
angels as well as men. 

But there is work of a different kind which also sustains 
a vital relation to the progress and final triumph of the 
Lord's kingdom. I refer to the work of furnishing a 
rational solution of the difficult problems of educated 
religious thought. These problems have hitherto given 
comparatively little trouble to the class of minds with which 
Methodism has had to deal. But a new era of its history is 
dawning. Its people are taking rank among the most cul- 
tivated and enlightened in the community. Its ministers 



RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 59 

are becoming eminent for learning as well as piety. Both 
ministers and people will soon be called to grapple with 
issues more difficult than those which have hitherto engaged 
their attention. Men are everywhere questioning tradi- 
tionary dogmas, and becoming more and more restive under 
teaching that inculcates the duty of a blind, unreasoning 
faith. Methodism, like all other forms of organized Chris- 
tianity, must be prepared to offer a rational exposition of its 
faith and of the authority and meaning of the Word of 
God. In the words of Isaac Taylor : 

" The past Methodism took to itself the belief which it 
found; but the coming Methodism must derive its belief 
anew from Scripture, by bringing to bear upon this difficult 
subject a reformed principle of biblical interpretation." — 
Wesley and Methodism. Page 289. 

In this higher range of religious thought many of the 
ministers of Methodism are quite at home ; and verge closely, 
on some points, toward the teachings of the New Church. 
But loyalty to their theological and ecclesiastical system 
renders it impossible for them to pursue their inquiries and 
announce their conclusions in perfect freedom. 

There seems little hope, therefore, that Methodism will 
soon be able to enter the field successfully against the adver- 
saries who now assail the bulwarks of revealed religion. By 
its very organic law, and by a provision which cannot be 
repealed, its Articles of Religion are made unchangeable. 
No advantage can hereafter be taken of any " reformed 
principle of biblical interpretation," unless it shall lead to 
conclusions in harmony with its present creed. And yet it 
is quite certain that any scheme of Christian belief, which 
shall satisfy all the just demands of rational thought, will 
require a reconstruction of all the traditional creeds of Chris- 



60 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

tendom. And if the great Methodistic movement is to 
sweep on until it shall occupy the higher as well as the lower 
planes of religious thought, and vanquish the present forms 
of unbelief, as it has immorality, sensuality, and all forms of 
practical irreligion in the past, it must be liberated from ex- 
isting restraints, and allow its best minds to enter upon a 
thorough re-examination of its doctrinal symbols. It must 
elaborate for itself, or accept from others, a faith that shall 
satisfy the most enlightened reason, as well as harmonize 
with a true interpretation of the Word of God. In effecting 
this work, Methodism will identify itself as a branch of the 
Lord's New Church. Failing to do this, it will evince its 
incompetency for its sublime mission, and give place to other 
agencies more imbued with the spirit of the New Dispen- 
sation. 

The relations of Methodism to the New Church are also 
seen in the fact that it has purified the religious feeling of 
the world, clarified the spiritual perceptions of men, and 
opened the way for the influx of higher forms of divine truth 
and the cultivation of advanced states of Christian experi- 
ence. It was well that Methodism approached the masses 
with the lower and more sensuous forms of Christian truth. 
Their feelings were thus aroused and their lives reformed, 
as they could not have been by more philosophical state- 
ments of the same truths. But the inevitable result of this 
kind of teaching, and, indeed, the only result that could in 
any case have been secured in the class of minds with which 
Methodism at first had to deal, was the creation of a highly 
emotional religion. The preaching, praying, exhorting and 
singing were calculated to play upon the sensuous nature, 
and produce a spiritual-natural, rather than a purely spirit- 
ual state of experience. This was often extremely vivid and 



RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 61 

powerful ; and enabled its subjects to maintain a life of 
piety, and die in holy triumph. It was a great advance 
upon the previous state of the Church. It supplied the 
requisite basis, too, for a still better condition of spiritual 
life. It prepared men to receive divine truth in rational 
form, and thus to realize a more purely spiritual experience. 
But in order that spiritual experience, in its best forms, 
may be developed, there must be a clearer and more rational 
presentation of the truths of religion than Methodism has 
been able to make. Those states of spiritual life which are 
proper to the New Dispensation, and which are approx- 
imated in the riper experiences of Methodism, are not nour- 
ished by sensuous truths. They can only be sustained by 
spiritual truths, shining in rational light. They involve, 
too, the opening of the spiritual degree of the mind, which 
can only be effected by the previous regeneration and illu- 
mination of the natural and rational degrees. While, there- 
fore, Methodism has lifted the general mind of the church 
up from the natural to the spiritual-natural sphere of re- 
ligious life ; and, by the partial reception of rational spiritual 
truths, has made an approximation to the higher states of , 
spiritual experience, it has proved itself inadequate to the 
further perfecting of its work. It has raised the Lazarus of 
a dead church, and removed his burial robes ; but it lacks 
the wisdom to instruct him in the varied duties and privi- 
leges of his resurrection state. Hence when souls pass from 
the elementary into the advanced states of regenerate life, 
they soon discover the incongruity that exists between the 
theoretical teachings of Methodism, and the deliverances of 
their own consciousness. They feel the need, and dimly 
discern the existence, of a spiritual philosophy widely dif- 
ferent from that which they have been taught ; and much 



62 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

of their subsequent life is then spent in the vain endeavor to 
reconcile their experiences with their doctrines. 

While, therefore, we hail John Wesley as the Lord's in- 
strument for the reformation of the vicious and degraded, 
and the restoration of spiritual life to a dead church, and 
as the John Baptist of the New Dispensation ; we welcome 
Emanuel Swedenborg as the wise and benignant teacher 
sent of God to instruct the renovated church in the doctrines 
of a pure and rational Christianity. And if Wesley was 
necessary to Swedenborg, it is equally true that Swedenborg 
was necessary to Wesley. Their labors were mutually com- 
plementary ; and yet, as often happens in the progress of 
reformatory movements, the pioneer and he who carried on 
the work to its completion, lived and labored without con- 
scious co-operation, and in comparative ignorance of each 
other's mission. Wesley's distinctive work is nearly finished : 
Swedenborg's is but just begun. Wesley's writings are no 
longer relished as formerly even amoug Methodists, and are 
scarcely known in the literary world : Swedenborg's are 
read more and more widely every year, and by the best 
thinkers of the age. Wesley has ceased to exercise any 
appreciable influence on the theology of the world : Sweden- 
borg is a rising power that is everywhere revolutionizing or 
greatly modifying the creeds of Christendom. Thus the 
involuntary testimony of Wesley to Swedenborg is "He 
must increase, but I must decrease." The Methodism of 
to-day is not the Methodism of thirty years ago. It has 
undergone a remarkable change. The Methodism of Wesley 
and the fathers, with its fiery zeal, its rude displays of 
power, its vivid experiences, its bold simplicity, its rigid 
rules, its technical piety, has passed away; and a new 
Methodism, wanting the impress of Wesley's mind, and 



RELATIONS OF METHODISM TO THE NEW CHURCH. 63 

shaped more nearly after the pattern of the New Church, 
has taken its place. 

It is eminently fitting, therefore, that there should be 
kindly relations between the adherents of Methodism and 
the men of the New Church. Nothing but unreasoning 
prejudice and needless misconception of each other's provi- 
dential mission, have thus far prevented fraternal intercourse 
between them. Both parties have, perhaps, been equally in 
fault. Wiser counsels must ultimately prevail ; and all who 
acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus, must stand shoulder to 
shoulder in the advancement of his kingdom. If, indeed, 
we are living under a New Dispensation, all Christian people, 
and all of every religion who are in a life of genuine charity, 
are more or less fully in the Lord's New Church, and 
entitled to its name and fellowship. There are New Church- 
men in all the churches ; and there are Old Churchmen in 
all the churches, even in the organized or visible New 
Church, if men are to be classified according to their genius 
and state. But our obligation to promote the union of the 
members of Christ's body, rests upon the further considera- 
tion that each is necessary to the other. Methodism needs 
the "reformed principles of biblical interpretation," the 
rational doctrines, and the divine philosophy of the New 
Church ; while the New Church needs the Christ conscious- 
ness, the living experience, the deep earnestness, and the 
practical wisdom of Methodism. The combination of these 
characteristic elements would constitute a power before 
which no opposition could stand. Thus far there has been 
perhaps a reasonable excuse for the want of a reformed 
theology in Methodism, and a partial apology for the want 
of religious earnestness and activity in the New Church ; 
but it cannot be necessary that each should perpetuate its 



64 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

defects. With the progress of the New Dispensation there 
must come a mingling of these kindred streams of influence, 
symbolized by Methodism and the New Church, that in 
their union each may supply what the other lacks. In 
this way only can each fulfil its appointed mission. 

As to Methodism, its first and most urgent need is a know- 
ledge of the true doctrine concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. 
The Christ of Christendom has hitherto been shorn of much 
of his strength by the erroneous estimates which his pro- 
fessed adherents have put upon him. To some he has been 
but an ordinary man; to others, a superhuman but still 
finite being; and to others, but an equal partner in the 
godhead, or one of three co-equal divine persons. Millions 
of jubilant souls have sung, 

" All hail the power of Jesus' name ! 
Let angels prostrate fall : 
Bring forth the royal diadem, 
And crown him Lord of all ;" 

but nowhere except among the professed adherents of the 
New Church have these stirring words been understood in 
their proper force. To others who have sung them, the 
Lordship of Jesus has been subordinate, or joint, and not 
exclusive. Let Christians understand that Jesus is Jehovah, 
the Mighty God and Everlasting Father, as well as the 
Prince of peace, and they will give to this inspiring song 
such an emphasis and such a fullness of devotional feeling, 
as have never yet been realized. It will be like the bursting 
forth of the noon-day sun through dense and darkening 
clouds. And if dim rays of truth from a misapprehended 
Christ have so illumined and gladdened the minds of his 
followers, and ushered in the dawn of the millennial glory, 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 65 

we may surely hope that the general acknowledgment of his 
majestic claims as the supreme and only God manifest in 
human form, will introduce the cloudless splendor of the 
New Jerusalem. 

CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 

It will doubtless be objected to the design of this appeal, 
that no comparison can be instituted and no relation exist 
between a body so great and powerful as Methodism, and a 
body so dissimilar in its form, and so small and feeble as the 
visible New Church. This objection seems well taken. The 
ecclesiastical body called the New Church, if judged by the 
number of its members and the time it has had for growth, 
is scarcely entitled to be mentioned in connection with Meth- 
odism, and is but a humiliating comment on the New Dis- 
pensation. I do not wish to be understood as claiming any 
special relationship between things so obviously different. 
The intelligent Methodist would, moreover, find just ground 
of offense in the attempt to make the numerous and influ- 
ential body of which he is a member a mere appendage or 
satellite of a religious body which is so small that its exist- 
ence is actually unknown to thousands of his own people. 
It would be to him, and to me also, like instituting a com- 
parison between a mountain and a molehill. But the atten- 
tive reader must have observed that I make no comparison 
and claim no special relation between Methodism and the 
visible organization called the New Church. I have pre- 
sented Methodism as the first phase of New Church life in 
the world ; the first tidal wave of that mighty movement of 
humanity, which may properly be called the New Dispen- 
sation of divine grace and truth. And the "New Church is 
the totality of this great movement, distinguished from all 
6 * 



Q6 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOKG. 

those foreign and incongruous elements which appear in 
Methodism and other popular forms of organized Chris- 
tianity. The New Church, therefore, in its proper character 
as an internal and spiritual body, organized by the Lord 
alone, is found in all religious associations, and is constituted 
of all who acknowledge the Lord and are in a life of charity. 
In this character the New Church is simply the Lord's 
church, and is the sun around which all ecclesiastical bodies 
must revolve. But in its still more specific character as 
composed of those who have entered rationally into the 
Christian faith, and now receive the distinctive doctrines of 
the New Dispensation more or less fully, the New Church 
may count its adherents by tens, perhaps hundreds, of thou- 
sands. There are found in all the churches, and outside of 
all the churches, those who hold its views concerning the 
spiritual world, the resurrection, the nature and process of 
regeneration, the doctrine of atonement, and the sole divinity 
of Jesus Christ. It is not for me to explain how persons 
can hold these views and yet maintain relations which would 
seem to imply the endorsement of creeds in which antagonis- 
tic views have always been supposed to be expressed. But 
that they receive the essential elements of the new theology 
is certain ; and their continuance in their old relations may 
doubtless be taken as evidence of the growing laxity of ortho- 
dox belief, and of a tacit understanding in the churches that 
a rigid adherence to formal creed statements, shall no longer 
be insisted on. And no ecclesiastical body can feel itself 
humiliated by being brought into comparison with this 
already numerous and rapidly-growing class of minds, unless 
indeed their superior intelligence and broader, diviner 
charity may cause its attainments to appear small, and 
show much of its fancied gold to be but dross. 



CONCLUDING KEFLECTIONS. 67 

But even the visible organization, known as the New 
Church, small as it is, is not a power to be despised. As an 
agency for publishing the doctrines of the New Dispensa- 
tion, it is performing a most important use. By means of 
books, tracts, periodicals, lectures, and sermons it is leaven- 
ing the mind of Christendom with a purer and more rational 
faith. The literature and philosophy, as well as the theology 
of the world, give abundant evidence of its success in 
revolutionizing the state of the human mind. It stands at 
the fountain head of theological and educated thought, and 
is pouring into it the healing waters of the river of life. 
The Presbyterian and Index, published at Columbia, S. C, 
says, in a recent issue : 

" There was a time, not long past, when perhaps it was 
proper enough to laugh at the pretended revelations of this 
mystic abomination. But really, Swedenborgianism has 
come to be a serious evil of no contemptible magnitude. It 
has left its fogs, and thrust itself upon the view as a sub- 
stantial foe. It is now a hard-working, faithful, progressive 
ally of modern infidelity ; and is all the mightier because of 
its loud boasts as a promoter of God's glory. Our readers, 
many of them, would be equally surprised and alarmed, did 
they know how widespread within our own ecclesiastical 
bounds is the poisoning atmosphere of this hair-brained 
philosophy." 

We are thankful for such testimony as this from an 
avowed antagonist. We have evidence, too, that the leaders 
of religious thought in all the churches, are verging steadily 
toward the "mystic abomination of Swedenborgianism," 
and are finding in it that which saves them from infidelity, 
and binds them more firmly than ever to the Lord Jesus 
Christ and to the inspired Word of God. 



68 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

Considered, therefore, in reference to the number of those 
who fully or partially accept its rational scheme of Chris- 
tian doctrine, and also in reference to the ecclesiastical 
organization which assumes its name, the New Church is a 
factor which cannot be safely ignored in forecasting the 
probable future of Christianity. Its apparent magnitude is 
no true measure of its real efficiency. The heart or brain, 
though constituting but a small fraction of the mass of the 
human body, is yet ranked as higher in importance than 
other portions of greater volume and weight. The govern- 
ing power in society, even in a pure democracy, rests practi- 
cally in the hands of a few. In like manner the New 
Church, composed of those who receive more or less fully 
the doctrines and the life of the New Dispensation, though 
feeble as yet in numbers and resources, and unworthy in 
these respects to be compared with Boodhism, Mohammedan- 
ism, Eomanism, or Methodism, whose adherents are num- 
bered by millions, and whose resources are boundless — 
constituting, as it does, the medium through which the 
influx of the new heavens is descending into the general 
mind of the race — is entitled to pre-eminence above all 
mere external or ecclesiastical organizations. 

The foregoing remarks are also a substantial answer to 
the objection raised against the New Church on account of 
the slowness of its growth, as compared with the growth of 
Methodism. In so far as Methodism is constituted of dis- 
tinctive New Church ideas, its growth is the growth of the 
New Church, and the very land of growth which Sweden- 
borg predicted for it. In the same way the New Church 
has been growing in all the existing churches, and growing 
in the general community outside of all the churches. 
That it has not grown more rapidly as an external organi- 



CONCLUDING EEFLECTIONS. 69 

zation, is doubtless, to some extent, the fault of its adherents. 
Their methods may have been injudicious ' and their aims 
mistaken. Their temper may have been too cold, and their 
religion too much a matter of theory. They may have held 
themselves too much aloof from the earnest practical work 
of reforming and saving their fellow men. Be this as it 
may, they have increased but slowly. But what I wish now 
to note particularly, is, that the distinctive work to be done 
by New Churchmen, must needs be done sloivly ; while the 
distinctive work which Methodism proposes to itself, can 
well be done rapidly. Methodism aims to bring men to a 
solemn and formal assumption of Christian discipleship ; 
and endeavors then to build them up in a life of experi- 
mental and practical piety. The New Church also seeks 
these ends ; but its distinctive mission is to lead men on to a 
rational understanding of Christian truth, and to develop in 
them a higher and purer spiritual experience than Method- 
ism, or any form of orthodox Christianity, is able to produce. 
It builds not for a century merely, it is doing work prepara- 
tory to the great church of the future. It is laying firmly 
the heavy foundation stones of the New Jerusalem ; and 
erecting the massive wall of jasper which shall protect her 
against the assaults of her foes. Building thus for all time, 
we must needs build slowly. The New Dispensation which 
the Lord is now inauguating, is to be the crown and con- 
summation of all the ages, and last forever. It must, 
therefore, rest on divine truths rationally apprehended. 
These can never change, or be outgrown or superseded. New 
truths supplementary to them, will doubtless be added from 
age to age ; but the old foundation stones will never need to 
be disturbed. But the instruction of men in rational truth 
and the development of the best forms of spiritual expe- 



70 WESLEY AND SWEDENBORG. 

rience cannot, at this stage of the New Dispensation, be 
hastened like the work which Methodism has undertaken. 
Revival methods are here of little avail. Indeed, as com- 
monly practiced, they would be irrelevant and injurious. 
True religion rests on principles of true spiritual science ; 
and the mastery of these principles is essential in order that 
the soul may enter into the higher ranges of Christian life. 

We are not discouraged, therefore, by -the little apparent 
growth which the New Church has realized, either in its 
visible or invisible proportions. We know it is growing, 
and growing as fast as the conditions of human society will 
allow. The theological changes of the last hundred years 
have been mainly in the direction of the New Church system 
of doctrine. Unitarianism and Universalism, whose work 
has been mainly a destructive one, have accomplished valu- 
able results in exposing the errors and absurdities of the 
orthodox faith, though they have been unable to provide 
any positive and rational system of truth in place of the 
errors they have destroyed. They have demonstrated the 
illogical and unscriptural character of the common dogmas 
of the tri-personality of God, the vicarious atonement, the 
resurrection of the body, the materialism of the future life, 
the vindictiveness of the Almighty, and the common theory 
of biblical inspiration and interpretation ; and have thus 
opened the way for more rational views on these subjects. 
Similar negative results have also been achieved by many 
able minds within the fold of reputed orthodoxy. Dr. Bush- 
nell, Henry Ward Beecher, and others of less note in this 
country, together with Robertson, Campbell, Young and 
other eminent divines in Great Britain, in their divergence 
from the so-called evangelical faith, have discarded most of 
the dogmas in which it differs from the theology of Sweden- 



CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS. 71 

borg, and on some points have come into substantial agree- 
ment with him. It is notorious also, as the New York Ob- 
server admits (April 4, 1872), " that Christians of various 
surnames are sinking the minor differences that divide them, 
and exalting the one great name, the only name given under 
heaven among men whereby they can be saved, and making 
Christ's Church, and Christ's work, and the salvation of 
souls more important than the building up of a mere de- 
nomination." 

Rev. Kay Palmer, D. D., in the American Presbyterian 
Review, two or three years since, bore similar testimony. 
He said "that while few or none of the cardinal truths of 
the New Testament " (by which he means the cardinal dog- 
mas of orthodoxy), "are positively doubted or denied, few 
or none, on the other hand, are vigorously grasped and un- 
flinchingly believed." To these doctrines, he says, " but a 
faint and faltering assent" is given, "as though the thought 
were secretly allowed, that, after all, there may be some un- 
certainty about these things." 

The Christian Advocate, N. Y. (Aug. 19, 1869), said: 
" Ours is an era of doubt. Nothing is accepted from the 
past as settled. The very foundation of things is carefully 
re-examined." 

The last General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church virtually decided in the appeal case of Rev. S. D. 
Simonds, of San Francisco, that one may hold and teach the 
views of the New Church concerning the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and yet remain a minister of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. Mr. Simonds having been suspended from the 
ministry for one year by the California Conference, on a bill 
of charges involving among other things the specification of 
"holding and disseminating doctrine contrary to the Articles 



72 WESLEY AND SWEDENBOEG. 

of Religion/' was reinstated by the General Conference, in 
full view of the fact that he still adhered to the doctrine, for 
holding and teaching which he had been suspended. This 
doctrine — the doctrine of Swedenborg concerning the Lord 
Jesus Christ, which necessarily involves the New Church 
view of the atonement — Mr. Simonds is still teaching as a 
Local minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, having, 
as he says, " gained the right, from the highest body, for 
myself (himself) and for all Methodists, to hold and teach 
the grand doctrine of the New Age." 

Facts like these are important. They show that the 
salient points of the orthodox faith are fading away from 
the minds of Christians, and held to be of little, if any, prac- 
tical value. And these are the points, too, that have consti- 
tuted a, barrier between New Churchmen and orthodox be- 
lievers, and stood in the way of New Church progress. I am 
justified, therefore, in the conclusion, that the theological 
changes to which I have referred, are leading the Christian 
world toward the ultimate acceptance of the beautiful and 
sublime doctrines of the New Dispensation. To every New 
Churchman the contemplation of this event affords a deep 
satisfaction. He glories in it, not because it will be the 
triumph of one sect over all others, or will secure the general 
recognition of Swedenborg's claims ; but because it will sig- 
nalize the overthrow of all sectarianism, whether, in Old or 
New Chur mmen ; will unite all hearts in the bonds of fra- 
ternal love ; and will exalt the Lord Jesus Christ, the Prince 
of peace, as the " blessed and only Potentate," " King of 
kings and Lord of lords." 



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